The Pharmacy Quality Alliance introduces its Educating Pharmacists In Quality program
SPRINGFIELD, Va. — The Pharmacy Quality Alliance on Wednesday announced the release of its Educating Pharmacists In Quality program. EPIQ is designed as a resource used to train practicing pharmacists, healthcare professionals and pharmacy students in measuring, improving and reporting quality of care in pharmacy practice.
EPIQ is now available on the PQA website, featuring 26 online modules with corresponding training videos, which serve as a source of complimentary continuing education credit for pharmacists. Session materials may also be downloaded in full for live CE use or professional development training. "EPIQ was developed to meet the need of pharmacists and other stakeholders both to understand quality and the role it plays in today's health care climate, as well as to guide practical implementation of the principles of quality improvement inside of real practice settings," stated Sam Stolpe, director quality strategies at PQA.
EPIQ materials are also available for pharmacy faculty and students as a turnkey, 26-session course which can either be utilized in its entirety as one-hour lectures within a full semester course, or separated into individual sessions to be integrated into an existing class. Each session contains a lecture PowerPoint, instructor guide, interactive activity set and assessment questions. "EPIQ contains educational resources that can be used by individual pharmacists, preceptors, or pharmacy educators," commented lead developer Terri Warholak of the University of Arizona College of Pharmacy. "It is completely self-contained, and sessions are tailored for use in a variety of settings, including community pharmacies, health-systems and managed care settings. EPIQ was developed to include comprehensive materials for various pharmacy quality or safety training needs. Its major subsections cover the critical quality topics facing today's practitioner, such as quality improvement, medication safety and error reduction and quality measures."
The development of EPIQ was made possible through the support of Abbvie and Merck.