The new PDA Education Hub has launched to offer a range of professional development courses and resources to help members to thrive and grow in their careers. The free resources will be exclusively available to PDA members to help them at all stages of their career; whether preparing for the pre-reg assessment, updating clinical knowledge or used as refresher training.

The Support Programme for Provisionally Registered Pharmacists is an online eight-week programme that has been developed to help prov-regs to prepare for their assessment.

“The PDA has always been very proud to support pre-regs with free membership and to provide training so as to support their preparations for their exam”, says PDA Chairman Mark Koziol. “This year, with the unexpected impact of COVID-19 creating the ‘Provisional Registration’ programme, we are delighted to announce a fully interactive, virtual PDA ‘Prov Reg’ support initiative which has been designed to support all those new pharmacists who are preparing for their pre-reg exam in early 2021. Members can look out for their email from the PDA and get involved!”

This is the first of many resources that will be added to the new PDA Education Hub over the coming months.

This latest announcement marks further growth for the PDA, which has grown rapidly, and today has more than 32,000 members. The PDA routinely stands up for the rights of individual pharmacists, and to date has already secured more than £4,000,000 in compensation paid by employers to employees or locums who may have been treated harshly, unfairly or illegally.

The PDA was launched in 2003. Back then, whilst the employer organisations had considerable resources and support organisations available to them in the event that they had a dispute with their pharmacists, individual employee and locum pharmacists had to fend for themselves. Pharmacists were crying out for fairness and justice and the PDA’s vision was to answer that call.

Whilst the PDA defends the interests of pharmacists, it also ensures that the voice of the individual pharmacist is heard and works to develop professionally fulfilling pharmacist careers. The PDA also regularly talks to government and key stakeholders, routinely defends pharmacists through its professional indemnity operation and more recently, it gives members from all parts of society a voice through the newly established diversity networks.

For more information about the PDA, visit: www.the-pda.org