Hospital or Other Healthcare Facility Pharmacist Practice Assessments

You must demonstrate how you meet the Standards of Practice during your assessment. The primary way that you do this is by sharing and discussing examples with your practice advisor that are representative of your everyday practice.  If you cannot provide and discuss appropriate examples during the assessment, you risk falling below in a key performance indicator, which could require the completion of additional quality assurance activities.

Submitting your documentation at least two weeks ahead of time means you will be better prepared and also supports a more efficient assessment.  If your documentation is not submitted ahead of time, does not meet the requirements for your role/practice setting or is not sufficient to assess your practice, the practice advisor will expect you to screen share practice examples during the assessment. Therefore, you must ensure you have authorization to share this information, including access to patient profiles at the pharmacy.

The deadline to submit your documents is 2 weeks prior to your assessment date; however, you may submit your documents earlier if you choose.

We take patient privacy very seriously at the College. All document submissions containing personal health information (patient name, etc.) are done via an encrypted web portal or Microsoft’s SharePoint platform. The encrypted web portal has end-to-end security, meaning all information is secure from the moment you send the email to the moment we receive it at the College. SharePoint allows files to be securely collected from external parties without granting access to the folder’s contents.

Redaction of patient information should be done according to your organization’s policies. Practice advisors do not need access to patient identities to perform the assessment. However, it is important for you to know the identity of your patients to provide any additional information during the assessment. If redacted copies are sent to OCP, you should keep a record of the patient’s name for your own use.

If you are using a personal device for any part of the submission, you should be redacting your documents. If redacting, do so fully and on a copy, not the original documents. Be vigilant for the presence of patient identifiers; these may appear in water marks found on prescriptions. Failure to fully redact, when necessary, may result in a privacy breach.

You may need to forward the SharePoint link to your work email for ease of sending documentation after redaction.

Please note that it is your responsibility to notify your organizations’ Privacy or Information Management Department, if required, to ensure that all document submission abides by your organizations’ policies and procedures for the release of records containing personal information and personal health information for the purpose of the Practice Assessment program at the College.

The practice assessment aims to understand how you make decisions to optimize your patient’s care. We are assessing your practice under four domains: Patient Assessment, Decision Making, Documentation and Communication.

This assessment requires you to make a document submission prior to the assessment.  Any examples that highlight how you solved a drug therapy problem for your patient would be ideal.

For pharmacists who provide pharmacy services to individual patients or their advocate, please submit six examples highlighting the following:

• Patient Assessment, Decision Making and Documentation – 4 examples with a Drug Therapy Problem

Examples could include but are not limited to: Therapeutic review of new medication orders, management of drug therapy problems, medication reconciliation therapeutic drug monitoring, deprescribing, opioid stewardship, antimicrobial stewardship, 90-day medication review, transitions of care with medication reconciliation, discharge medication reviews.

Note: Patient Assessment, Decision Making and Documentation examples should be recent (i.e., within the last three months).

• Communication – 1 example of Verbal communication with patients or other Healthcare Professionals

Examples could include but are not limited to: Drug information, patient education, chart notes for patient education, presentations.

• Medication Safety – 1 example

Examples could include but are not limited to: Documentation of a good catch, medication incident report, medication safety suggestion

Note: Medication Safety example should be within the past year.

We recognize that every pharmacist’s practice is unique, including the role that they play in their organization and the patient population that they serve.

Documentation guidelines

The examples submitted should include any documentation made (notes on patient assessment, notes in patient chart, references used to make decisions, lab values and diagnostic tests used to identify drug therapy problems and make decisions, communication with the prescriber, and any follow-up and monitoring).

Documentation should be submitted exactly as it looked when you completed it – do not send a separate summary. The practice assessment is meant to be a review of your day-to-day practice and the examples submitted should reflect the patient population you provide pharmacy services for.

Key Points:

• Select examples for different patients and different medications.
• There should be different types of drug therapy problems submitted.
• Select recent examples (i.e., within the last three months; medication safety example in the past year).
• Select examples that best demonstrate each of the 4 domains of the practice assessment criteria.

Please discuss any concerns you have surrounding the requested patient care examples with your Practice Advisor

Please submit 5-8 patient care examples from the following list:

• Therapeutic Review of New Medication Orders/Prescriptions – 2 examples (1 regular prescription & 1 opioid prescription)
• Therapeutic Review of Refill and PRN Medication Orders/Prescriptions – 2 examples (1 refill for a resident residing in a retirement home & 1 reorder of a PRN medication for a resident residing in long-term care)
• Medication Reconciliation and/or Quarterly/Annual Medication Review
• Drug Information/ Education
• Pharmacist Prescribing – 1-3 examples (Pharmacist Authorized Renewals, Adaptations, Minor Ailments & Paxlovid or Tamiflu Prescribing)

Note: Examples should be recent (i.e., within the last three months).

For each example, please submit the following:

1. Prescription
2. Patient profile
3. Any documentation or notes made at the time (i.e. counselling notes, notes on the patient profile, correspondence with the prescriber, DTP notes, references used, assessment notes, follow-up and monitoring notes, hardcopy if applicable, etc.)

Note: Documentation should be submitted exactly as it looked when you completed it – do not send a separate summary.

Examples should highlight how you identify and manage drug therapy problems (DTPs) to help improve patient outcomes.

We recognize that every pharmacist’s practice is unique, including the role that they play in their organization and the patient population that they serve. Please discuss any concerns you have surrounding the requested patient care examples with your Practice Advisor.

Pharmacists who are in a leadership or specialty role may undertake a number of patient care activities that are not reflected in the documentation requirements for pharmacists working in a hospital, family health team or long-term care (see previous FAQs). The Part A & Part B Register webpage provides a list of patient care activities at the individual and population-based levels.

Here are some examples of documents that could be submitted to demonstrate the patient care activities you are undertaking:

• Medication incident or ADR reports
• Documentation on the patient chart
• Email communication
• Non-formulary drug requests
• Meeting minutes
• Memo communication
• Preprinted order sets, medical directives (with suggested updates)
• Formulary submission form with details of suggested changes

We recognize that every pharmacist’s practice is unique, including the role that they play in their organization and the patient population that they serve. Please discuss any concerns you have surrounding patient care examples with your Practice Advisor.

Documents for your patient care examples should be submitted as PDFs (strongly preferred) or JPEGs.

• For PDFs, use 1 PDF/example (i.e. include all documents for 1 example in the same PDF).

Documents should follow the order outlined above and be well organized so that it is easy to decipher what happened.

Files names should identify the type of patient care example that is included. Example file names:

• Part A – Therapeutic drug monitoring
• Part B – Patient counselling

No. Please submit your documentation exactly as it looked when you completed it. We are trying to assess your everyday practice. You will be given the chance to elaborate during the practice assessment.

Documentation submission is done via Microsoft SharePoint. 

You will receive an email from ocpdocumentation@ocpinfo.com containing all of the document submission requirements and where you’ll be asked to submit your documents using the Microsoft SharePoint file request link.

You’ll be asked to upload all of your documents directly from your device. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Once you click on the Microsoft SharePoint file request link, a new page will open
2. Click “Select Files” and browse the appropriate folder on your device
3. Select the first example and click “Open”
4. If you need to add additional files, select “Add more files”
5. Select the next example and click “Open”
6. Repeat this process until all of your files are uploaded.
7. Once you verify all of your documents appear, type your name in the text box (if it isn’t already pre-filled in) and click “Upload”

Please note that once your submission is uploaded, you won’t be able to access the documents, so please ensure that you have them available during your assessment.

When completing the submission:

• Send all of your documents in on the same day.
• Include a list of examples you have submitted and the number of pages for each example so your submission can be reconciled.

Once your submission is uploaded, you’ll be notified immediately by an on-screen message that your files are “Finished Uploading”. This means that your files were received successfully. Further communication will ONLY be sent if your submission is incomplete.

The submission link will automatically close 90 days after it is sent.  This timeline will not affect any documents you have previously submitted for your practice assessment. Your documents will remain on file until your assessment date.   If you require an additional submission link to be sent, please email ocpdocumentation@ocpinfo.com to request one.

All documents submitted to the practice advisor for the purposes of the practice assessment will be securely destroyed 15 days after the assessment documentation has been uploaded to OCP’s Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system according to OCP’s Records Retention Schedule and Privacy Management practices.

The College is committed to providing the highest level of security, controls and integrity to support the safe transfer of the information you provide.

Microsoft SharePoint’s file request feature allows files to be securely collected from external parties without granting access to the folder’s contents. The designated link provided to you does not allow any user to view, edit or download any existing files. Access is provided solely for the purpose of file uploads.

More information on the security standards and data encryption used in SharePoint is available in this Microsoft article.