Every year, when a pharmacist or pharmacy technician renews their registration, they must submit four CPD records, one peer discussion record and one reflective account. At least two of the four CPD records must be planned. That is the whole of GPhC revalidation — no hours target, no points, and no way to satisfy it by collecting certificates.
This guide covers each of the six records, what the GPhC actually reads when it reviews them, the 2026 change to the reflective account, and where online learning genuinely fits in a pharmacy professional’s year.
At a glance: Nexis CPD offers £9 CPD-accredited online courses relevant to pharmacy practice, with a verifiable e-certificate on passing — and any three courses cost £18.
The six records, in full
Revalidation happens at renewal, annually, for both pharmacists and pharmacy technicians. You submit:
- Four CPD records — of which at least two must be planned learning
- One peer discussion record
- One reflective account
Six records, once a year. The volume is modest by design: the GPhC is asking for evidence of thinking, not evidence of attendance.
Planned and unplanned CPD
Planned learning is something you decided to do because you identified a need: attending a training course, working through a clinical update, reading a guideline you knew you were rusty on. At least two of your four records must be this kind.
Unplanned learning is what the job teaches you without asking: an unusual interaction you had to research mid-shift, a near miss that changed your checking routine, a patient question you could not answer and looked up afterwards. These often make the strongest records, because the learning is unmistakably real and the practice change is concrete.
The balance matters practically. Professionals who only record planned learning tend to produce records that read like course summaries. Professionals who only record unplanned learning fail the requirement.
The peer discussion
The peer discussion is one conversation a year with someone you trust and respect, reflecting on your learning and your practice, and recorded afterwards.
Your peer does not have to be a pharmacist. It can be a colleague from another profession, a manager, a mentor, or someone outside your workplace entirely — what matters is that they know enough about your work to challenge you usefully. A discussion where the other person only agrees with you is a wasted hour.
Practical points that make this easier:
- Choose the peer for friction, not comfort. The best discussions come from someone who asks why you do something the way you do.
- Prepare one real question. “Am I handling emergency supply requests consistently?” produces more than “how am I doing?”
- Write it up the same day. The record asks what you discussed and what you took from it, and detail evaporates fast.
Where CPD records come from in a normal week
Pharmacy professionals often say they have nothing to write about, which is usually a recording problem rather than a learning problem. A typical fortnight in community or hospital practice generates:
- An interaction check that took longer than expected, and what you now watch for
- A dose you queried with a prescriber, and what the conversation taught you
- A new formulation, device or service you had to learn quickly
- A patient who did not understand their regimen, and what you changed in how you explain it
- A near miss in the dispensing process, and the check you added
- A conversation with a colleague that changed your mind about something
Any one of those is a record. The trick is to capture two or three sentences at the time — the need, the learning, the change — rather than trying to remember in renewal month.
Timing your submission
Renewal is annual and the date is fixed to your registration, so the records are due on a predictable rhythm. Two habits prevent the scramble: write each record when the thing happens rather than in batch, and book the peer discussion early in the year rather than late, because it depends on somebody else’s diary. A peer discussion arranged in the final fortnight tends to be a chat rather than a challenge, and it shows in the record.
The reflective account, and the 2026 change
The reflective account asks you to reflect on how you meet the standards for pharmacy professionals in your own practice.
The important recent change: from 1 January 2026, you can select any of the nine standards for pharmacy professionals for your reflective account. Before that, the GPhC nominated a limited set each year and everyone reflected on the same ones.
That is a meaningful shift. It moves the account from a compliance exercise — everyone writing about the same standard in the same renewal window — to a genuine choice about what matters in your practice this year. It also removes the excuse that the nominated standard did not fit your role.
Choose the standard where something actually happened: a situation that tested your professional judgement, a time you had to speak up, a change in how you communicate with patients. Then write about that situation rather than about the standard in the abstract.
What makes a record pass, and what makes it thin
The GPhC reviews a selection of submissions. The difference between a strong record and a weak one is consistent across all six types, and it comes down to the same question: what changed?
Thin: “Completed an online course on anticoagulants. Useful refresher covering the main agents and monitoring requirements. Will apply in practice.”
Strong: “Completed a course on anticoagulants because we had two DOAC dosing queries in a fortnight and I was not confident about dose reduction in renal impairment. I had been checking creatinine clearance inconsistently. I now calculate it for every DOAC prescription over 65 or where the record shows renal impairment, and I have added a prompt to our checking sheet. I picked up an apixaban dose that needed reducing the following week and contacted the prescriber.”
The second one takes five minutes and covers the identified need, the learning and the outcome — the three things any reviewer is looking for.
Pharmacy technicians: the same system, a different scope
Pharmacy technicians are registrants in their own right and have exactly the same revalidation requirements — four CPD records with at least two planned, one peer discussion, one reflective account. What differs is the scope of practice the records should reflect.
Technician records that read well tend to come from accuracy checking, dispensing process improvement, stock and controlled drug governance, medicines reconciliation, training and supervising others, and the service the technician actually leads. Records that read poorly tend to be clinical topics copied from a pharmacist colleague’s learning, which fits the job description of someone else.
The reflective account matters here too: the nine standards apply to both professions, so a technician choosing the standard that fits their role — supervision, communication, professional judgement — produces a far better account than one reaching for a standard about clinical decision-making they do not make.
If you work across several employers
Locums and part-time professionals carry the same requirement with none of the infrastructure. Nobody schedules your training, your mandatory modules are repeated at every employer, and there is often no obvious peer.
Three adjustments help. Keep your own record from day one rather than relying on any employer system you may lose access to. Use professional networks, local pharmaceutical committees or online professional groups to find a peer for the annual discussion, and agree it months ahead. And treat the variety as an advantage — working across multiple settings generates far more unplanned learning than a single stable role, and it makes for genuinely interesting records.
Revalidation is not the only training obligation
Pharmacy professionals typically carry three distinct training duties, and confusing them causes gaps:
- GPhC revalidation — the six records above. Personal, annual, follows you between employers.
- Employer mandatory training — safeguarding, information governance, health and safety, fire, and usually more for those in NHS-facing roles. Set by the employer, tracked centrally, required as a condition of employment.
- Service-specific requirements — the training and declarations attached to particular commissioned services, which vary by service and by nation.
Mandatory training can absolutely be used as a CPD record where it is relevant and you reflect on it. But a set of four records built entirely from employer modules tends to read as compliance rather than development, and it does not evidence that you identified your own learning needs.
What happens after you submit
Submission is part of renewal, so the immediate consequence of not doing it is straightforward: you cannot renew, and registration that lapses stops you practising until it is restored. That is a slower and more expensive problem than writing six records.
The GPhC reviews a selection of submissions rather than every one. If yours is reviewed and the records do not show what is required, you may be asked for more — which is recoverable, but only if the underlying activity actually happened. Records written retrospectively to fill a gap are the ones that struggle, because the detail that makes reflection convincing is precisely what cannot be invented.
Two things are worth doing regardless of whether you are reviewed:
- Keep your own copy. Your records are evidence of your development over a career, not just a renewal formality, and they are the raw material for appraisals, job applications and advanced practice portfolios.
- Read one of your own records from two years ago. It is the fastest way to judge whether you are writing genuine reflection or filling boxes, and it usually prompts a better standard in the current year.
The safeguarding dimension people underestimate
Community pharmacy is one of the few healthcare settings people walk into without an appointment, which makes pharmacy teams a genuine safeguarding touchpoint. Repeat requests for certain medicines, a carer collecting for someone never seen, a child interpreting for a parent, signs of coercion around emergency contraception — these present at the counter rather than in a consulting room.
Most pharmacy professionals receive safeguarding training through their employer, but counter staff and delivery drivers frequently do not, despite being the people most likely to notice. If you manage a pharmacy, that gap is worth checking before anything else on a training plan.
Standards, not just records
It is easy to treat revalidation as an administrative task and forget what sits underneath it: the standards for pharmacy professionals describe the practice the public is entitled to expect, and the records are simply how you show you are thinking about them.
That framing changes what you write about. A record about a busy week is not interesting. A record about the moment you decided not to supply, and how you handled the patient’s reaction, is — because professional judgement under pressure is exactly what the standards are about.
The same applies to the awkward areas people avoid writing about: a complaint, a disagreement with a prescriber, a time you were wrong. Those make the strongest reflective accounts, and nobody is marking you down for having had a difficult day. The alternative — four clean records about courses you enjoyed — tells a reviewer very little about how you practise.
Which courses suit a pharmacy team?
- Safeguarding Adults — the Care Act framework and raising concerns (see what is safeguarding adults)
- Mental Capacity Act — capacity and consent at the counter (see the five principles)
- Data Protection and GDPR Awareness — patient records and confidentiality (see what is GDPR)
Those three together cost £18 rather than £27, because any three courses trigger the pay-for-2-get-3 offer. Add them to the cart and the discount applies automatically. Teams often add Safeguarding Children, Infection Prevention and Control or Conflict Management for counter staff.
The honest caveat: completing a course is an activity, not a CPD record. What the GPhC reads is the reflection — the need you identified, what you learned, and what changed in your practice. The certificate evidences the activity; the record is still yours to write.
Frequently asked questions
What do pharmacists need to submit for GPhC revalidation?
Every year at renewal, pharmacists and pharmacy technicians submit four CPD records, one peer discussion record and one reflective account. At least two of the four CPD records must be planned learning. There is no hours target and no points system; the GPhC is looking for evidence of reflection and change in practice rather than attendance.
What counts as planned CPD for the GPhC?
Planned learning is something you chose to do because you identified a need, such as attending a training course, working through a clinical update or reading a guideline you knew you were rusty on. At least two of your four annual CPD records must be planned. Unplanned learning, which the job throws at you, makes up the rest and often produces the strongest records.
Who can I do my GPhC peer discussion with?
Someone you trust and respect who knows enough about your work to challenge you usefully. They do not have to be a pharmacist; a colleague from another profession, a manager or a mentor can all work. Prepare one real question, hold an honest conversation rather than a comfortable one, and write the record up the same day while the detail is fresh.
What has changed about the GPhC reflective account in 2026?
From 1 January 2026, pharmacists and pharmacy technicians can select any of the nine standards for pharmacy professionals for their revalidation reflective account. Previously the GPhC nominated a limited set of standards each year. The change lets you reflect on the standard that actually mattered in your practice rather than the one everyone was assigned.
Can employer mandatory training count as GPhC CPD?
It can, where it is relevant to your practice and you reflect on it properly. But four records built entirely from employer modules tend to read as compliance rather than development, and they do not evidence that you identified your own learning needs. Mix them with learning you chose, and with the unplanned learning that comes out of real cases.
Do pharmacy counter staff need safeguarding training?
They are not GPhC registrants, so revalidation does not apply to them, but they are often the people most likely to notice a concern, and employers have their own duties. Counter staff and delivery drivers are a common gap in pharmacy training plans despite being the first point of contact for people who walk in without an appointment.
CPD courses for pharmacy professionals
£9 per course. CPD accredited, 100% online, verifiable e-certificate. Pay for 2, get 3 — any 3 courses for £18.
This article is general information, not legal advice or a statement of GPhC policy. Nexis CPD is not a GPhC-approved provider, and a CPD awareness course is not a pharmacy qualification. Revalidation requirements change; always confirm the current rules with the General Pharmaceutical Council before you submit.