Pharmacy Practice and Professional Conduct
This domain tests the standards expected of a registered pharmacist in everyday practice: the Board's Code of Professional Conduct, patient-centred duties, confidentiality, consent, conflicts of interest, advertising, supervision, and the disciplinary consequences of misconduct. Questions often place you in a realistic dispensing or counselling scenario and ask what a reasonable pharmacist should do.
Core professional duties
- Competence and continuing development: practise within your competence, keep knowledge current, and meet the Board's CPE requirements for practising certificate renewal.
- Patient-centred care: assess the prescription, counsel on proper use, warn of significant side effects, and refer when the medicine or situation is outside your competence.
- Confidentiality: protect patient information; disclose only with consent or where disclosure is required or permitted by law, such as statutory reporting.
- Informed consent: explain the proposed medicine, alternatives, and material risks; respect a patient's refusal.
- Conflicts of interest: avoid financial or personal interests that compromise professional judgement, and declare and manage unavoidable conflicts.
- Supervision and delegation: the pharmacist remains accountable for dispensing; support staff and technicians must be supervised.
- Advertising: do not make false or misleading claims; prescription-only medicines are not advertised to the public.
Worked example
A regular customer asks you to dispense a prescription for a Part I poison written for her elderly mother, but the prescription is made out in the daughter's name and the dose is unusual. You should not dispense on the assumption that "it is for the family". Verify the prescription with the prescriber, confirm the patient's identity, and document the query. If the prescription appears forged or altered, refuse to dispense and report the matter as appropriate. This protects the patient and satisfies your professional duty.
Disciplinary context
Complaints about professional misconduct may be referred to the Disciplinary Committee of the Pharmacy and Poisons Board. Findings can lead to a caution, reprimand, fine, suspension, or removal from the register. Dishonesty, breach of confidentiality, unsafe dispensing, and inadequate records are common grounds.
Traps that cost marks
Treating confidentiality as absolute and ignoring statutory reporting; assuming a prescription is valid because it looks official; allowing commercial targets to override clinical judgement; and failing to document advice, interventions, or refusal to dispense.