Pharmacies: Lack of time makes it difficult to take advantage of further education and training opportunities
25.07.2023 16:21
Offers for further education and training as well as training courses are highly relevant in pharmacies. Difficulties in taking advantage of relevant offers on a regular basis are often due to a lack of time. Online offerings are encouraged. Economic index for the current business situation is falling again.
Regular further education and training are highly relevant in many professional fields - including in pharmacies. Regardless of whether you are a pharmacy owner, branch manager, other licensed person, PTA or PKA: regular further education or training is important for all professional groups in the pharmacy. But: There is potential for optimization, as the current edition of the APOkix (pharmacy business index) from IFH KÖLN shows. Online offerings offer great future potential.
Regular further education and training are highly relevant
95 percent of the pharmacy owners surveyed believe that regular further education or training is important to extremely important for them and for branch managers. Due to changing requirements for the pharmacist profession, the need for training on non-technical topics such as sales or marketing (88 %), but also on pharmaceutical topics (85 %), has increased significantly in recent years. The relevance of further education and training is particularly high for pharmaceutical technical employees (98 %) and licensed practitioners without management positions (97 %). The relevance for pharmaceutical and commercial employees is somewhat more muted (86 %). One reason: advanced training and training for PKA are often rated as mediocre (35 %) or even poor (22 %). The educational offerings and training for other professional groups are rated significantly more positively.
Compatibility with everyday work is difficult
Integrating the various offers of further education and training into everyday working life is often challenging: 82 percent see the lack of time as the biggest obstacle. A good half of people (55 %) also say that organizing ongoing pharmacy operations is difficult. But those surveyed also see potential for improvement on a content level. 29 percent complain about the selection of topics and 12 percent complain about the quality of the offerings. In addition, suitable offers are often not available in your own area (23 %). A problem that can be addressed with online offerings: 86 percent support the increase in online further education and training offerings as well as online training courses and are convinced (90 %) that this creates more flexibility when using corresponding offerings in everyday working life.
Economic indices: downward trend continues
The assessment of the current business situation by the pharmacy owners surveyed continues to be cautious. The index stood at 61.8 points in July – losing 2.5 points compared to the previous month. The view of the next 12 months is more positive again in July: the economic index rises to 50.3 points - and improves by 6.4 points compared to June 2023. But: both economic indices are still well below the values of the previous year.