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The Rural Pharmacist Forum and the National Rural Health Alliance Conference at Albury 7th-10th March 2007
Karalyn Huxhagen
A Queensland PSA Councilor Perspective
Issue 59: April 2007
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The second Rural pharmacist forum hosted by the Rural Pharmacy Workforce program was held in Albury on the 7th March and a diverse audience of pharmacists attended.
It was pleasing to see a mix of students, academics, practicing community and hospital pharmacists from regional and rural areas as well as representatives from the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia (me), the Pharmacy Guild of Australia and the Society of Hospital Pharmacists of Australia.
Pharmacy is represented on the National Rural Health Alliance (NRHA) by Alison Alyott.
This appointment is a three way appointment as Alison represents the Pharmacy Guild of Australia (PGA), Pharmaceutical Society of Australia (PSA) and the Society of Hospital Pharmacists (SHPA).
She has risen to the position of treasurer of the alliance which is a testament to how seriously she takes her role of being the sole voice of pharmacy within a large group of health practitioners.
Lance Emerson, director of programs and professional services at the Pharmacy Guild gave an overview of the 4th community pharmacy agreement (CPA) programs that have recently been committed to by the Health Minister at APP. Lance indicated how the programs were to be established and what structure would be behind them to ensure that rural pharmacy will be able to access and deliver these programs.
It will be a huge task for the PGA and PSA to inform pharmacists about these new programs and then to mentor and encourage pharmacists to uptake and implement these new roles in such areas as medication profiling, diabetes, asthma care, and dosage administration aids.
Readiness kits are to be provided for all of these services by mid 2007 and there is to be a professional services roadshow in mid 2008.
The role of the HMR facilitator will change under these new programs with their role becoming a QUM services facilitator.
Lance also discussed some of changes to the Aboriginal and Islander program including the S100 scheme, indigenous scholarships and the urban access scheme.
The urban access scheme is designed to improve QUM and PBS access in non remote settings and is a joint program with NACCHO, PSA and PGA.Lance also spoke of some of the programs that have continued on and been improved on from the 3rd CPA including the pharmacist academics at universities of rural health, the mentoring program for undergraduates and an increase in the number of scholarships on offer.
A new program on offer from July 2007 that was recommended in the evaluation of the 3rd agreement programs is the training of aboriginal and Torres Strait islander pharmacy assistants in rural and remote health centres.
The start up and succession allowances have been made more flexible.
The CPE allowance has received more funding and has been streamlined and made into an online claiming process. The presentation by Chastina Anderson, an indigenous pharmacy graduate who did her rural placement in Doomadgee was an excellent insight into the problems faced in small rural communities with very little pharmacy services. Chastina’s description of her placement mirrored many of the comments of people like Andrew Roberts who work in small isolated aboriginal communities.
As there is no regular pharmacist in attendance in these communities many of the pharmacists’s roles fall back to the local nursing staff.
There is an acute need for better modelling in providing pharmacy services in rural and remote areas and this topic was discussed and debated within the 3rd agreement evaluation as well as by many other researchers including the project by Dr Tracey Bessel, Dr Lynne Emmerton, Dr Lisa Nissen and Dr Jennifer Marriott titled “Improving Australian’s Access to Prescription Medicines: Development project”.
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Lindy Swain, a pharmacy academic, presented on ‘Partnerships in care: collaboration between rural pharmacists and other health professionals.”
Lindy is currently working on a project which involves training rural and remote pharmacists in NSW to teach their local aboriginal health workers about cardiovascular medicines.
Lindy spoke on her work in educating other health professional and community members about medication issues and the important role that a pharmacist can play in a collaborative partnership.
I have attended three NRHA conferences in the last six years and have seen fantastic work like Lindy’s showcased.
I despair that we seem to undertake these projects in a fragmented framework and that we spend a lot of time reinventing the project outlines and implementation schedules.
This is not rocket science work for a pharmacist but so often we are either under funded or not funded at all but expected to undertake these roles.
Helen Howarth presented on Tasmanian University’s RIPPER project which involved pharmacy students spending a weekend with medical and nursing students and learning in a case-based scenario.
Many of the Australian universities are currently conducting similar projects.
This undergraduate learning process with their colleagues and peers is an important part of developing good interprofessional skills.
Patrick Ball, Professor of Rural and Remote Pharmacy at Charles Sturt University, challenged us to think about the most appropriate skill mixes for the rural and remote pharmacist of the future.
Peter Gissing spoke on succession planning and knowing when was the time to move aside and let the new partners take over.
Lynn Short from Thursday Island gave us an insight into how she delivers exceptional pharmacy services outside of her bricks and mortar pharmacy.
This lady is a remarkable example of a hard working community pharmacist who thinks outside the four walls of her pharmacy.
Peter Hatswell from the NT showcased his pharmacy services model for the NT which seems him flying to the communities that he services.
The main body of the conference from the Thursday to the Saturday had many sessions relevant or pertaining to pharmacy.
One of these was a presentation by Anne Leversha from SHPA on the project about education of preceptors.
The original model has been adapted to be able to provide on line education and mentoring to all health care professionals involved in a preceptor format.
Fran Vaughan gave an excellent overview of the problems she has encountered in developing models to deliver pharmacy services in the NT.
She also raised issues that she has encountered with the S100 program and the inflexibility of the current state versus commonwealth legislation that regulates pharmacy.
The conference once again was jam packed with interesting project presentations and thought provoking sessions on areas like communication from health professionals to consumers.
Julie McCrossin was a fantastic conference facilitator and added her own brand of humour to the proceedings.
I thoroughly recommend attending these biannual conferences if you are given the chance as the networking and sessions gives you encouragement and guidance to keep you fighting for a better way to deliver health services in rural and remote Australia.
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