Professional bodies come together to explore future professional practice
Forty leading practitioners discussed the future of the pharmacy profession at a symposium in Melbourne last week.
On Thursday, the Centre for Medicine Use and Safety [CMUS] at Monash University invited senior representatives from all major pharmacy organisations along with consumers, new graduates, regulators and innovators to consciously plan the future of the profession.
Professor Carl Kirkpatrick, Director of CMUS, said the University was committed to ensuring a viable future for pharmacists through further development of their professional practice.
“In a rapidly changing healthcare environment a new framework is required to facilitate professionally rewarding roles for pharmacists, particularly in primary care,” Professor Kirkpatrick said.
At the symposium, a number of suggested scenarios of future practice were evaluated using the enabling domains outlined in the profession’s recently released Vision statement - Building upon pharmacists’ practice in Australia – A Vision for the Profession. Included in the enabling domains are leadership, viability, workforce, education, legislation, information and technology.
The objective was to establish guiding principles for further development within each enabling domain to facilitate professional models of practice that offer benefits to patients and provide challenging and rewarding career choices for both current practitioners and new graduates.
Jan Donovan, Consumer Health Forum Board member reminded the delegates that “people now expect health systems, health care organisations and health practitioners to move to a higher level of performance and adopt a more humanistic and holistic approach to health care. She encouraged pharmacists to adopt coordinated, multi-disciplinary and consumer centred care roles”.
Some of the key messages to come out of the symposium included the need for pharmacy organisations to find common goals and strategies that are patient focussed.
John Jackson, Director of a Monash University initiative called Project Pharmacist and convenor of the symposium, said the following key issues also came out of the day.
"It would help if the Australian government at all levels developed a coordinated strategy for pharmacy including clear articulation of their expectations, as had been done in Scotland, England and New Zealand," he said.
“Other main messages to come out of the day included a need to review the Community Pharmacy Agreement (CPA) as policy objectives had moved on since it was developed 25 years ago.
“Current and comprehensive workforce data is also a priority as without such data it makes it hard for the profession, universities and governments to plan appropriately. Along with a planned workforce there is a need for mentoring across the profession to enhance career pathways in primary practice.”
Mr Jackson said consumers also believed all pharmacy computer systems were already linked. It is important that linkage is achieved and that pharmacy software is transformed from being a remuneration tool to a patient management tool.
“These guiding principles will shape the future work of Project Pharmacist as it works to facilitate enhanced and sustainable roles for pharmacists,” he said.
“Pharmacists have the need and opportunity to implement new models of practice which address the demands within the health system, offer benefits to patients and provide challenging and rewarding career choices for both current practitioners and new graduates.”