NZ Intern Pharmacist AC cheat sheet

The intern year in Aotearoa New Zealand is delivered by the Pharmaceutical Society of New Zealand (PSNZ) through its Education and Training arm; completion of the intern programme plus the Assessment Centre are prerequisites for registration with the Pharmacy Council.

The intern programme is built around the Competence Standards for the Pharmacy Profession (PSNZ), which group required performance into domains such as professional practice, medicines management, patient care, and interprofessional and organisational practice.

A key structural element is the ELP (earlier called the Evans Learning Portfolio / electronic learning portfolio): interns record evidence mapped to competence standards, and the portfolio is reviewed against those standards rather than against hours served.

Recognition of prior learning: an intern may apply to have prior supervised practice or overseas experience counted toward the internship period; approval sits with the Pharmacy Council, not the preceptor, and must be obtained before the period is claimed.

The preceptor is a registered pharmacist approved to supervise; the intern–preceptor relationship requires documented, regular feedback. Preceptor registration/approval and any preceptor training requirements are administered through the Council/PSNZ process.

The Assessment Centre (AC) is a summative, competence-based assessment, typically comprising stations such as a simulated patient consultation, a medicines-information/enquiry task, a law-and-ethics or professional-judgement station, and a written or calculation component.

Assessment Centre stations are marked against behavioural criteria (e.g., greeting and consent, structured history, clinical reasoning, safety checks, counselling, documentation, referral), so demonstrating process matters as much as the final answer.

Progression rules: the intern must meet programme requirements (portfolio evidence, workplace sign-off, Assessment Centre pass) before applying for an Annual Practising Certificate; an APC is required to practise as a pharmacist in New Zealand.

Cultural competence is embedded, not optional: evidence should show application of Te Tiriti o Waitangi principles and culturally safe practice with Māori and other communities, including appropriate use of te reo Māori and whānau involvement.

The Medicines Act 1981 and Medicines Regulations 1984 set the legal classification framework (prescription, restricted, pharmacy-only, general sale) and the rules for dispensing, prescribing and record-keeping; the Medicines (Database of Medical Devices) Regulations and related amendment regulations update detail.

The Misuse of Drugs Act 1975 and Misuse of Drugs Regulations 1977 govern controlled drugs: prescription validity periods, maximum quantities, storage, witnessed destruction, and register requirements.

The Pharmaceutical Schedule (PHARMAC) determines subsidy and manufacturer's price; a medicine may be listed with restrictions (e.g., only on a Retail Pharmacy Specialist or Hospital Specialist recommendation), so check the restriction before assuming subsidy.

Section 29 of the Medicines Act allows supply of an unapproved medicine to a named patient under the responsibility of an authorised prescriber; the pharmacist's role is to dispense against a valid s29 supply and to record it.

The New Zealand Formulary (NZF) and NZULM (New Zealand Universal List of Medicines) are the standard point-of-care references for indications, dosing, interactions and funding status; Medsafe datasheets and the Medsafe safety alerts provide regulatory and safety information.

Best-practice guidance comes from BPAC NZ (e.g., antibiotic prescribing, gout, cardiovascular risk), the Health Quality & Safety Commission, and the Ministry of Health; these are the usual sources cited for audit and quality-improvement work.

The Pharmacy Council's Code of Ethics and the Health and Disability Commissioner's Code of Consumers' Rights (Right 4, services of an appropriate standard; Right 7, informed consent) underpin consultation and documentation standards.

Reporting obligations: adverse drug reactions go to the Centre for Adverse Reactions Monitoring (CARM); medication errors and near misses are reported through the national reporting programme, and serious harm may require HDC notification.

Calculations and practical checks rely on defined references: BSA and renal function (e.g., Cockcroft–Gault or CKD-EPI as specified by the source), and paediatric weight-based dosing verified against a current paediatric reference rather than memory.

Recertification is administered by the Pharmacy Council under the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act 2003; the APC is annual, and the recertification cycle is assessed over a defined multi-year period against Council requirements.

The recertification framework requires evidence across domains: continuing professional development (CPD), peer review or peer interaction, and practice-based/quality-improvement activity, with records retained for the full cycle.

CPD is recorded as points or hours depending on the Council's current framework; activities must be relevant to the pharmacist's scope of practice, and a proportion should address identified learning needs rather than only attendance at events.

A documented learning cycle (identify need, plan, undertake, reflect, apply) is the expected structure; a certificate of attendance alone does not evidence learning - the reflection linking it to practice is the evidence.

Audit is a quality-improvement cycle: define the standard (guideline or best practice), set measurable criteria and a sample, collect data, compare against the standard, implement a change, then re-audit to show improvement.

Audit records should be contemporaneous and traceable: criteria, sample size and selection method, data-collection tool, results, analysis, action plan with owners and dates, and re-audit results.

The Council audits a sample of pharmacists' recertification records; failure to provide evidence can lead to conditions on, or non-renewal of, the APC, so records must be retrievable, not just completed.

Recertification evidence must reflect the pharmacist's actual scope; a pharmacist changing scope (e.g., to prescribing or a new practice setting) needs a competence/learning plan aligned to that new scope.

Confidentiality and privacy apply to audit data: patient identifiers should be minimised, and Health Information Privacy Code rules govern collection, storage, use and retention of audit records.