Pharmacy Daily | Pharmacy must be culturally safe

PHARMACISTS are being urged to embrace the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia's (PSA's) new Guideline for pharmacists supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples with medicines management, so they provide culturally safe care.

Launching the guideline at the PSA's conference in Sydney on Sat, Indigenous pharmacist, Associate Professor Faye McMillan (pictured), said it was important that pharmacists practice in a socially just manner.

"We've really been deliberate in the way the guidelines have been set out, to say that they are agnostic, and that they are applicable to every person that works in pharmacy and that works in the pharmacy space - not just the pharmacist," she said.

McMillan stressed that when it comes to the delivery of culturally safe and responsive care, the patient is the person who determines what their experience has been.

"We can obviously stand there and go 'that was not my intention', if somebody tells you that 'I felt uncomfortable, I didn't feel safe', or the other words of 'I felt racism, I experienced racism in your workplace'," she said.

"They're hard things to hear, they're hard things to be reflective of, but we really need to hear these, because it's the experience of the individuals, and when we're saying we are culturally safe practitioners and we are responding to the culture of the people we are working with, then that demonstrates a level of emotional intelligence that allows us to continually reflect on our own practice."

McMillan said the guidelines provide "signposts" for pharmacists to better support Indigenous Australians in a culturally safe environment.

However, she noted that throughout her career she has not always found the profession to be culturally safe.

"It wasn't until 2019, that I as a Wiradjuri woman felt part of the pharmacy family," she said.

"It wasn't a culturally safe place for me as a First Nations person to be engaged in the profession.

"So I worked in other organisations to try and create the opportunities and the change that I felt was needed in the pharmacy profession, and it has been a hard journey".