Several pharmacy organizations have recently addressed the need to establish competency in our profession among students, residents, and practitioners. In the past 3 months, the American College of Clinical Pharmacy (ACCP) has released two new guidelines: the updated ACCP guideline on clinical pharmacist competencies (www.accp.com/docs/positions/guidelines/Competencies_Final_2.25.17.pdf) and the accompanying ACCP template for evaluating clinical pharmacists (www.accp.com/docs/positions/guidelines/Lee_3.3.17.pdf). Both papers are available on our website and will soon be published in Pharmacotherapy. These guidelines update the 2008 paper on clinical pharmacist competencies and the original 1993 “Template for the Evaluation of a Clinical Pharmacist” and were written by the 2016 ACCP Certification Affairs and Clinical Practice Affairs committees, respectively.

The “ACCP Clinical Pharmacist Competencies” paper includes six core competencies necessary for providing clinical pharmacy services in team-based, patient-centered care settings: direct patient care, pharmacotherapy knowledge, systems-based care and population health, communication, professionalism, and continuing professional development. These domains are intended to ensure clinical pharmacists’ competency to provide comprehensive medication management as defined in the 2014 ACCP Standards of Practice (www.accp.com/docs/positions/guidelines/StndrsPracClinPharm_Pharmaco8-14.pdf) and are in general alignment with the core competencies for practicing physicians established by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME; www.ecfmg.org/echo/acgme-core-competencies.html).

The updated “ACCP Template for Evaluating a Clinical Pharmacist” relies on assessment of tasks associated with the six core clinical pharmacist competencies. The authors include criteria for evaluating several optional tasks as well, such as serving in leadership roles, conducting pharmacotherapy-related research, and educating health care professionals. The template design includes suggestions for evaluating performance in each domain and provides a column for users to insert their own criteria to define success within the clinical pharmacist’s specific practice environment.

The timing of these new ACCP guidelines coincides with that of several other pharmacy or health care–related competency-based documents. In 2016, the Interprofessional Education Collaborative released an update of its Core Competencies for Interprofessional Collaborative Practice (https://ipecollaborative.org/uploads/IPEC-2016-Updated-Core-Competencies-Report__final_release_.PDF). The document includes four competency areas: working with individuals of other professions to maintain a climate of respect and shared values; using the knowledge of the individual’s own role as well as the roles of other professions to assess and direct the health care needs of patients and promote and advance the health of populations; communicating with patients, families, communities, and other professionals to support a team approach to the promotion of health and prevention and treatment of disease; and applying relationship-building values and the principles of team dynamics to plan, deliver, and evaluate patient- and population-centered care. This document, designed for use in interprofessional education as well as clinical practice, is further divided into subcompetencies and serves as a useful tool for either individual or team-based assessment. It may also be useful as a supplement to the ACCP clinical pharmacist evaluation template when the team as a whole needs to be evaluated to add context to clinical pharmacist performance.

Other recent guidelines include those of the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, which released the latest revision of the Accreditation Standard for Postgraduate Year One (PGY1) Pharmacy Residency Programs in 2016 (https://www.ashp.org/professional-development/residency-information/residency-program-directors/residency-accreditation/accreditation-standards-for-pgy1-pharmacy-residencies). This is the latest update of the major revision in the 2014 standard. An updated standard for postgraduate year two (PGY2) programs was released in 2015, with competency areas, goals, and objectives for programs in critical care, oncology, pediatrics, and psychiatry released in 2016. Documents for the remaining PGY2 programs are expected to be released later this year. These new standards and accompanying competency areas, goals, and objectives were developed to better reflect current pharmacy practice, with greater emphasis on team-based practice and process improvement, further streamlining of the evaluation process, and provision of increased consistency across programs. Although these residency competencies don’t currently align closely with the ACCP or ACGME competencies, they reflect iterative progress toward better defining the patient care–related learning outcomes achieved during postgraduate training.

In late 2016, the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP) also released a new document, “Core Entrustable Professional Activities for New Pharmacy Graduates” (www.aacp.org/governance/councilfaculties/Documents/CoreEntrustableProfessionalActivitiesforNewPharmacyGraduates.pdf). This document was designed to reflect similar efforts in academic medicine to define the activities that can be entrusted to new medical school graduates in 2014 by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), “Core Entrustable Professional Activities for Entering Residency: Curriculum Developers’ Guide” (https://members.aamc.org/eweb/upload/Core%20EPA%20Curriculum%20Dev%20Guide.pdf). Moreover, the AACP entrustable professional activities (EPAs) document for pharmacists aligns with the AAMC EPAs for medical school graduates. The six domains listed in the AACP document are patient care provider, interprofessional team member, population health promoter, information master, practice manager, and self-developer. Although the medicine and pharmacy documents differ, there is considerable agreement within the knowledge, patient care, population health, communication, professionalism, and continued professional development components that contribute to the respective EPAs.

I believe the emphasis on establishing and updating professional competencies is a very positive sign for the pharmacy profession because it reflects our continued professional evolution toward team-based, patient-centered care. Better definitions and evaluations of our clinical competence will no doubt contribute to improved patient medication-related outcomes.