Pharmacy Technician 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.

Please submit the following list of recent (i.e., within the last three months) examples.

• New prescriptions processed, filled or checked – 2 examples (1 regular prescription and 1 opioid prescription)
• Refill prescriptions processed, filled or checked – 2 examples (1 regular prescription and 1 opioid prescription)
• Compliance packs filled or checked – 2 examples (include examples of in house prepared compliance packs and central fill compliance packs if applicable)
• Non-sterile compounded prescriptions completed or checked – 2 examples (ensure the complete compounding record is included in the documentation)
• Prescription clarifications made for patient – 2 examples, if possible
• Verbal prescriptions received for a patient – 2 examples, if possible
• Administration of an injection – 1 example, if applicable
• Training patient on a device – 1 example, if possible (including examples of references used, process for training and any documentation)
• Documentation of a near miss/incident reported – 1 example
• Automation in pharmacy – 1 example of transactions for either restocking of canisters or verifying accuracy of dispensing

Documentation for each example should include:

1. Prescription
2. Hardcopy
3. Complete prescription record
4. Summary of the patient profile
5. Any documentation made at the time (e.g., notes on the pharmacy software system/patient profile, identification of drug therapy problems, correspondence with prescriber, what information was gathered, where information was documented in the pharmacy computer, communications with pharmacy team).

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 submit the following list of recent examples.

• Documentation of communication with the pharmacist, physician and/or nurse (for example, consulting pharmacist for decision-making, collaboration, narcotic audits/inventory, end of shift communication) – 1 example
• Medication safety suggestions brought forward to team/supervisor/manager – 1 example
• Documentation of a good catch/near miss or medication incident reported (try to send a copy of your electronic submission or write out the example) – 1 example

For the role that you are trained/certified to perform and have done recently (the last shifts worked) prior to submission due date, submit 8 total examples from the following:

• Product preparation/transactions you have performed (for example: a BPMH with all source information gathered (including the final paper and electronic documentation); sterile or non-sterile compounding records (recipe/formula, electronic/paper records, label – this may be a batch and a patient specific example); repackaging (including perpetual inventory if applicable), fill list, order entry, narcotic returns or discrepancies, narcotic tracers/audits performed, ADC restocking, interim doses). NOTE: At least 1 example must include documentation of calculations performed.

To ensure that the practice advisor knows which documents correspond to which type of patient care activity, we ask that you please NAME the document attachments to indicate this clearly. For example: NEW RX 1 or BPMH 1 or COMPOUNDING 2.

For all the requested documentation, you should either:

• scan the documents and save the screenshots as PDFs (strongly preferred), or
• take a picture and save as a JPG.

Please ensure the quality of the picture is of good clarity and reasonable size so the practice advisor can read it easily.

For PDFs, use 1 PDF per example (i.e., include all documents for 1 example in the same PDF). Documents should be well organized, so it is easy to figure out what happened.

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 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.