PHARMACISTS need to focus on engaging with patients and play an active role in their patients' health care, Melbourne-based pharmacist and master-herbalist, Gerald Quigley, believes.
Speaking on the latest episode of the Raven's Recruitment's Your Pharmacy Career Podcast, Quigley stressed the key position pharmacists have in the health of the people they care for.
"I've always thought that pharmacists in their younger days could learn an awful lot by heading to the bush, and being quite involved in a person's health," he said.
"I sometimes wonder whether we've become so clinical and so physiological that we've forgotten our role as a team member in a person's health... engagement is very important."
Reflecting on "the old days" Quigley noted "a person who was on insulin you took special care of, a person on warfarin, straight away you were aware of".
"Now all of these things perhaps have been forgotten, because there is so much dispensing being done now it's become so mechanical," he said.
"In many cases with interactions we forget there's a real-life person in front of us that's looking for help, often totally confused about what is going on and what they've been told if they've just come from the GP or a specialist.
"That's our role, to get involved in - pity we don't get paid for it, but to get paid for something you've got to earn the respect, and we've still got a long way to go to do that in my view."
Quigley added that the pharmacy profession presented "enormous opportunities" for people to specialise in "many different things".
CLICK HERE to listen to the latest episodes in series two of the Your Pharmacy Career Podcast.
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