Pharmacy Daily | Pharmacy must look after its young

AUSTRALIA'S pharmacy profession needs to review how interns are prepared to enter the workforce, Commonwealth Department of Health Special Advisor and pharmacist, Emeritus Professor, Lloyd Sansom AO, believes.

Responding to comments made during a webinar last night by Pharmacists' Support Service (PSS) Executive Officer, Kay Dunkley, that a lot of early career pharmacists and interns have expressed disillusionment with the profession, Sansom said the profession needed to "look after its young".

Dunkley noted that the lack of accreditation for intern placements has led to a number of graduates working in "not very ideal environments as they're going through their intern year and then when they come out into the profession they often become quite disillusioned, and it's not just around the low pay, it's also around job satisfaction, the environment and the lack of support from the manager or owner of the pharmacy".

Sansom described the quality assurance around internships as "a vexed question", adding that intern training providers (ITPs) have a critical role in supporting young pharmacists through to registration.

"You may remember a few years ago the [Pharmacy] Board [of Australia] tried to require certain attributes from preceptors and the number of preceptors decreased by 50% overnight," he said.

"I think the ITPs have a critical role in this.

"They are the only third party which actually interacts with these people on a regular basis...I'm wondering whether your experience with some of these issues [Kay], is really recognising that the ITPs have a responsibility broader than whether or not the professional development programs are right, but their the personal and professional development is right.

"Unless anyone looks after its young the species will die," he said.

"That's dramatic, but that's what it's about...you've got to nurture these kids.

"I know what a pharmacy course is now, I know what I went through, and I know what I taught, and it's a completely different world [today].

"These people are prepared intellectually and academically, what they are not prepared for is professionally and emotionally.

"We don't expose them to that in the way that medicine does for example - it's not an immediate solution, but in the longer term we need to look at this issue."

Sansom added that the script-focused nature of many pharmacies "might be alright for the business, but isn't any good for the profession".

"They're expected to sit there and do 300 scripts a day and you can't counsel much, because you've got to do the scripts," he said.