Pharmacy Council recertification and MyRecert requirements for pharmacists

Every pharmacist who holds an annual practising certificate (APC) in Aotearoa New Zealand is on the Pharmacy Council's recertification programme, set under section 41 of the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act 2003 (HPCA Act). The Council's recertification policy describes it as a high-trust system: you complete a small number of professional development activities each year, record them in MyRecert, and confirm at renewal that you have done so. A verifier checks your portfolio before your certificate expires, and the Council audits a group of records every year.

When you apply to renew your APC, the Council's recertification page says you must do three things:

• Confirm your professional development requirements are met for the practising year that is ending.
• Confirm at least 450 hours of practice in the three years immediately before your application.
• Declare that you are fit to practise.

The practising year runs from 1 April to 31 March. So the 2025–26 requirements had to be finished by 31 March 2026, before the APC that started on 1 April 2026 was issued. This page turns that list into a working checklist, shows how a verifier fits in, and walks through one example of building a critical reflection from a single learning activity, which is the part pharmacists most often tell us they find hard to start.

The hours test looks back over the three years immediately before each APC application. You need at least 450 hours of practice within your scope over that window. It is a rolling figure, so it is checked again every year, not once every three years.

Practical points to keep in mind:

• Keep your own running log of hours by year (rosters, payslips or a simple spreadsheet). This matters most for part-time, locum and non-dispensing roles.
• If you cannot confirm the statement, say so. The Council's page asks pharmacists to "be honest if you are unable to confirm a statement" and says it may ask for more information, with the aim of working alongside you so you can practise safely.

These are the requirements the Council published for the practising year 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026 (CPD requirements 2025–26). The full list below applied to pharmacists whose APC was issued between April and November 2025. Pharmacists whose APC was issued later in the year had a reduced set (for example, the critical reflection was optional and peer group meetings were not required for APCs issued from December 2025, and one verifier conversation was needed for APCs issued December 2025 to January 2026).

The Council notes that one activity can contribute to more than one requirement, but it recommends a distinct entry in each section. In practice that means a single course might feed a learning goal, appear in your keeping-up-to-date log and give you material for your critical reflection, as long as each entry explains its own link.

What about 2026–27?

We could not confirm the published requirements for the practising year that began on 1 April 2026 when this page was checked (October 2026). They may be similar to 2025–26, but do not assume so. Check the current requirements on the Pharmacy Council recertification page and in MyRecert before you plan your year.

The requirements are small, but they are spread across the year and the sign-off has a hard deadline. A simple plan avoids the March rush:

1. April to June: write your two SMART learning goals in MyRecert within the first three months. Book a first conversation with your verifier and agree when the second will happen.
2. July to September: complete the main learning for goal one. Start your keeping-up-to-date log and add to it as you go rather than reconstructing it later.
3. October to December: attend your first peer group meeting and record what you contributed. Choose and complete your cultural safety action. Draft your critical reflection while the learning is still fresh.
4. January to February: second peer group meeting; update both goals with evidence of progress; finish the reflection; hold your second verifier conversation.
5. Early March: give your verifier online access and allow time for sign-off well before 31 March. Then complete your APC declarations accurately.

The Council's verifier guidance says your verifier should be a registered pharmacist with similar or greater experience who understands your type of practice, ideally someone who knows you. If that is not possible, choose someone familiar with the activities, issues and constraints of the kind of work you do.

• Avoid close personal ties. The guidance says the role works best when the verifier is not a personal partner or close friend, and asks verifiers to manage conflicts of interest and power imbalances (for example, an employer who is also your verifier).
• Expect questions, not answers. Verifiers act as a sounding board, asking probing questions rather than solving problems for you.
• Be open about gaps. If a verifier has concerns about competence, the guidance encourages open and frank conversations. It also states that information disclosed in this process is protected under the law and that the verifier is not required to notify it to the Council.

Bring your goals, what you have done and one thing you would now do differently to each conversation.

Two Council documents give the framework for goals and reflections.

Code of Ethics 2018

The Code of Ethics 2018 has seven principles. A pharmacist:

1. Makes the health and wellbeing of the patient their first priority.
2. Practises and promotes patient-centred care.
3. Uses professional judgement for the good of the patient, their family and whānau, and the community.
4. Is honest, acts with integrity and protects public trust in pharmacy.
5. Only practises under conditions which uphold professional independence, judgement and integrity.
6. Demonstrates a commitment to continual professional and personal development.
7. Works collaboratively with others.

Principle 6 is the ethical basis of recertification itself: keeping knowledge current, practising safely within your scope and committing to lifelong learning.

Competence Standards (2023)

The Competence Standards for Aotearoa New Zealand Pharmacists (published June 2023, with a separate set for pharmacist prescribers) replaced the 2015 standards. They are grouped into seven domains, starting with Te Tiriti o Waitangi and Professionalism in Pharmacy, and including communication and collaboration, leadership, person-centred care and medicines management, supply and administration of medicines, and public health. The standards document says each pharmacist should periodically review their practice against the standards as part of their reflection for continuing professional development, which is why "a competence standard of your choice" is one of the two allowed starting points for the critical reflection.

Neither the Council nor the Pharmaceutical Society publishes a model answer, so here is an illustration of the process. It is an example of structure, not a template the Council has endorsed, and your reflection must be about your own practice.

Setting: a community pharmacist in a busy suburban pharmacy. During the year a patient overhears another patient's medicines being discussed at the counter and later mentions it. Nothing is formally raised, but the pharmacist sets a learning goal.

Learning goal (SMART): "By 30 September, complete structured learning on health information privacy and confidentiality, and introduce one change to how private conversations happen at our counter, reviewed with the team in October."

Activity: the pharmacist completes our 3-hour Health Information Privacy and Confidentiality course, logs it in the keeping-up-to-date section, and links it to the goal.

Critical reflection (summary of each part):

1. Standard chosen: confidentiality within the Professionalism in Pharmacy domain, and Code of Ethics principle 2, which includes safeguarding the confidentiality of patients' information, in digital and hard copy.
2. What happened: a factual, de-identified account of the counter conversation and how it was noticed. No patient names or identifying details.
3. Analysis: why it happened (layout, queue pressure, habit of confirming medicines aloud), what the Health Information Privacy Code 2020 and the course said about reasonable safeguards, and what the patient might have felt.
4. What I learned: two or three specific points, for example how to confirm identity without reading out a medicine list, and when to move a conversation to the consultation room.
5. Change made: a team agreement on quiet-voice confirmation and a sign offering a private space, discussed at a staff huddle (which counts as team practice, though not as a peer group meeting).
6. Evidence of impact: what the pharmacist observed over the following months, and what they would review next. This is what turns a description into a critical reflection.

The same goal then gives the pharmacist something concrete for a verifier conversation, and the counter change could be shared at a peer group meeting. Our course catalogue lists the other topics that work the same way.

The requirement is one action towards cultural safety, logged with relevant detail. Te Tiriti o Waitangi is the first domain of the 2023 Competence Standards, so an action that changes something in your own practice will usually be easier to describe than attendance alone. Examples include reviewing how medicines information is explained to patients and whānau, or checking that interpreter access is offered when needed. Record what you did, why, and what changed.

The Council audits MyRecert records from a selected group of pharmacists each year. A record that passes audit shows clear links between each entry and the requirement it meets, and enough detail to show you engaged with the learning.

If you have not met the requirements, contact the Council early rather than making a declaration you cannot support. The recertification policy says the Council may seek more information, impose conditions on your scope of practice, or in significant cases suspend registration. Write every entry yourself: copying another person's reflection or record is a probity issue, not just a paperwork one.

As an independent provider, we have no approval, accreditation or endorsement from the Pharmacy Council or the Pharmaceutical Society, and the Council does not assign credit values to individual courses. What a course can do is support a learning goal, fill a keeping-up-to-date entry and give you structured material for your critical reflection, which your verifier then considers. Courses are online at your own pace; you answer checks along the way, need 80% in a final 20-question test, and come away with a certificate and reflective account that a verifier can look at.

Prices are in New Zealand dollars. If you are dealing with a complaint or Council process rather than routine recertification, our guide to a Pharmacy Council complaint about a pharmacist explains that route separately.