Pharmacy Daily | No magic bullet for workforce crisis

MULTIPLE levers need to be pulled to resolve Australian pharmacy's current workforce crisis, Pharmacy Guild of Australia National President, Trent Twomey, says.

Speaking at Pharmacy Connect last week, Twomey said there was "no magic bullet to solving the problems that are facing the Australian pharmacy workforce".

"Every workforce is having problems," he said.

"Every workforce has experienced stagnant wages... whether it's butchers, bakers or candlestick makers, no one can get staff.

"There are multiple levers that need to be pulled, and the Guild is working with the Council of Pharmacy Schools, we're working with the National Australian Pharmacy Students' Association (NAPSA), the employee unions and with governments of all levels, to ensure that at the end of it we have a better paid, better skilled and more productive workforce than the one we currently have.

"But to do that we're not looking at it solely through the prism of proprietors.

"We have to look at it first and foremost through the prism of patients, and just as importantly through the prism of practitioners.

"We're working with the Council of Pharmacy Schools to ensure that the pharmacy programs are meeting the workforce requirements of Australian community pharmacies, which means we need more graduates in regional areas.

"We need to ensure the graduates are graduating with all the skills and knowledge necessary to perform all of these full scope of practice tasks that we're talking about.

"You shouldn't have to go and do a vaccination course after you leave university - universities should be training pharmacists to vaccinate.

"This is a natural part of the evolution of our profession - those things didn't exist when I went through university."

Twomey noted that changes in the curriculum would take time to filter through, and that skilled migration would play a critical role in boosting workforce numbers.

He added that over the last two and a half years, the community pharmacy sector has lost staff to hospital pharmacy, and was unable to backfill those positions through skilled migration.