An observational assessment tool designed to evaluate a pharmacist's non-clinical skills - e.g. communication and team working. Although some of these skills may also be assessed in the context of clinical practice (e.g. patient consultations assessed as part of a Mini-CEX, working with the multi-disciplinary team assessed as part of an ACAT), there are numerous non-patient facing activities that pharmacists could get involved in.
Some examples of non-patient facing activities that pharmacists could get involved with are listed below, however this is not an exhaustive list:
Charing a meeting. Post-registration foundation pharmacists may be invited to meetings such as on-call working groups, band 6 (or 7) pharmacist forums or groups that discuss improvements to pharmacy services
Presenting at a meeting. Pharmacists may have to present a paper or task they have completed at one of the aforementioned departmental meetings
Working with others to complete a project or task
Checking and release of products from an aseptic unit
As a pharmacist's experience develops, they will attend directorate, divisional or even Trust level meetings and undertake projects with the wider multi-disciplinary team. They may also join specialist interest groups of external organisations (e.g. UKCPA) and actively contribute to the wider healthcare agenda.
The DONCS should not be used for delivering education and training sessions since there are separate SLE tools for these:
Pharmacists can identify opportunities for completing DONCS by considering their workload and groups they belong to. They also need to identify an appropriate assessor and if possible ask them in advance to complete a feedback form (e.g. if they're presenting at an on-call working group, they can ask one of the senior pharmacists that will be in attendance). As the name of the SLE includes "direct observation", examples used should not be based around a retrospective discussion (with their Educational Supervisor) of a meeting they have chaired or presented at.