Designing a Professional Development Course Sequence to Address Standard 4 Elements Using a CPD Framework

ACPE defines personal and professional development as an expected outcome of the Doctor of Pharmacy degree program, but there is scarce data in the literature discussing methods for systematically addressing these concepts in curricula. This paper describes the development and attributes of a four-year professional development course sequence within a college of pharmacy designed to develop students' knowledge, skills, abilities, behaviors, and attitudes necessary to demonstrate self-awareness, leadership, innovation and entrepreneurship, and professionalism through their life-long career. Each course has at least one required activity addressing each of the four elements of Standard 4. The continuous professional development framework is used as a backbone to the course sequence structure, utilizing the four elements of CPD—reflect, plan, act, evaluate.