Background
This study evaluated the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain (RPSGB)'s system for the provision of feedback to registered, practising pharmacists on their Continuing Professional Development (CPD). In 2004, approximately 300 pharmacists submitted their CPD records to the RPSGB for review and individual feedback, as part of an ongoing pilot project. Thirty-two of these pharmacists, agreed to participate in one of two workshops held in London and Cardiff in July 2005. This paper describes a novel approach to the exploration of pharmacists' views on the value of CPD feedback using three different qualitative methodologies. Although this approach had previously been used to undertake a learning needs analysis of pharmacists,1 the combination of methodologies had not been employed as a research tool.

Methods
During the one-day workshop, pharmacists participated in three parallel sessions to provide i) a written critique of the structure and content of the feedback report ii) a focus group discussion on the RPSGB's general approach to CPD and the provision of feedback on the CPD records submitted and iii) a consensus of the changes required in order to improve the quality and content of the feedback. An introduction and icebreaker was conducted at the beginning of the workshop. At the end of each workshop participants listed the key changes in order of priority using nominal group technique (NGT).

Results
The participants engaged fully with the research to provide a constructive and useful critique. Overall a good level of agreement was found between both workshops and the three research methods employed. Findings from the written critique provided specific detail on how the feedback report could be improved in terms of content, structure, wording and general presentation. Thematic analysis of the five focus group transcripts resulted in ten broad themes to represent participants' views about the CPD feedback scheme. Results of the NGT produced three priority recommendations for change. These were identical for both workshops despite being conducted entirely independently of each other. Most of the issues captured in the focus groups also emerged from the written critique and consensus panel discussions. Despite the high level of corroboration between the findings of each parallel session each individual methodology had its own strengths. For example, the written critique addressed specific issues regarding the format of the report whilst the focus groups revealed strong emotional responses not captured by the other two methods. The NGT was of clear benefit in producing a consensus of the key priorities for change.

Conclusion
In conclusion, this novel approach provided a systematic and structured framework for the evaluation of participants' views and was successful in gaining an in-depth, yet pragmatic evaluation of the CPD feedback system.