Become a Designated Prescribing Practitioner for Find-A-DPP

This page is intended for independent prescribers who are considering becoming a Designated Prescribing Practitioner (DPP) to support a healthcare professional through their prescribing course or have been approached by a pharmacist to act as their DPP. Being a DPP for Find-A-DPP is a paid opportunity, please read the guidance below and submit the form at the bottom to proceed with becoming a DPP.

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What is a Designated Prescribing Practitioner?

A Designated Prescribing Professional (DPP) is a healthcare professional in Great Britain or Northern Ireland with legal independent prescribing rights who supervises a health care professional during their independent prescribing (IP) course and provides ‘sign-off’ on their competency to prescribe.

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You do not now have to be a doctor to supervise an IP learner. The role of DPP can be performed by any independent prescriber including doctors, nurses and Allied Health Professionals (AHPs). At Find-A-DPP we will provide you with the students profile so you can decide if you're willing to act as the DPP for the student.

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What does a DPP do?

The specific activities that a DPP is required to undertake will vary between courses. However, generally the DPP role encompasses the following activities:

• Access to clinical experience: Facilitating access to a suitable clinical patient-facing environment to enable the learner to practice their prescribing skills, such as consultation and clinical assessment.

• Supervision in practice: Providing supervision, support and feedback during the period of learning in practice to enable the learner to develop the skills required to prescribe competently, such as consultation, clinical decision-making and clinical assessment skills. The learner must spend 90 hours supervised in practice during their course (usually six months). However the number of hours the DPP is required to supervise the learner themselves varies from 10-90 hours depending on the course provider (usually 45-60). Please note this will differ following IETP Reforms.

• Multi-professional supervision: Supporting and facilitating the supervision of the learner’s practice by other appropriate independent prescribers.

• Assessment: Monitoring and assessing the learner’s practice against their prescribing scope and course requirements, completing documentation as required by the course provider and taking part in tripartite meetings (with the learner and their course provider) approximately three times during their training.

• Accountability: Ensuring safe and effective patient care and being accountable for the learner’s period of learning in practice.

• Assure competency: Signing to confirm that the learner has completed the required learning in practice hours, reached the level of competency required by the course provider and is suitable for annotation as an independent prescriber by the GPhC.

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What are the requirements to be a DPP?

Generally course providers will refer to the RPS Competency Framework for Designated Prescribing Practitioners when describing their requirements of a DPP. 

At Find A DPP, we expect all DPPs to:

• Have current professional registration and be prescribing within their scope of practice

• Be an experienced Independent Prescriber ‘who would normally have’ at least 3 years of recent prescribing experience

• Be an active prescriber who makes prescribing decisions based on clinical assessment with sufficient frequency to maintain competence

• Have appropriate knowledge and experience relevant to the learner’s scope of clinical practice

• Be able to evidence Continuous Professional Development (CPD) or revalidation relevant to their role

• Have experience of, or training in, teaching and/or supervising in practice

• Be in a patient-facing role​​

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