ITAT Segment 16 Pharmacist Interview Transcript(1) PDF

Preview

Summary

transcript overview...

Description

ITAT Segment 16 Pharmacist Extended Interview Transcript Fiona: I’m Fiona, Fiona Ellem, I’m a pharmacist. Pharmacists are health professionals who are involved in all aspects of assisting clients with the safe and effective use of their medicines. We work independently with patients themselves and also with doctors and nurses, and other health professionals in multidisciplinary teams. Narrator: Pharmacy has a long history. Fossils from plants with medicinal properties have been found with the remains of Neanderthals, indicating that early humans may have used these plants as drugs around 50,000 BC. There is both academic and cultural recognition of the value of traditional remedies from many cultures, including those of Australian First Peoples. Fiona: Pharmacist have, I suppose always been involved primarily with the supply of medicines. But way back in the olden days they also had the, there was a cross over between the role of the pharmacist and the doctor. So they were very much independent prescribers and there were pharmacist surgeons, and pharmacist dentists, and pharmacist vets. Narrator: In the 19th century the professions of pharmacy and medicine started to become independent fields of qualification. In the 1870’s, the Pharmaceutical Societies of each state of Australia were formed, to take responsibility for overseeing training, qualifications and practice standards. Pharmacy in those days was learnt by apprenticeship, and pharmacists were called “chemists” – or pharmaceutical chemists. Fiona: Now, we have all really found our niche in managing the complexity of health care these days by specialising in particular areas, so a lot of that overlap is gone but the understanding of overall health care remains. Narrator: Now, after completing their degree, pharmacists must undertake a year of supervised internship. Registration and ethical practice standards are overseen by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency. Most pharmacies operate utilising the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme – a federal funding agreement that strictly controls the prices of subsidised medicines in Australia. This scheme allows Australian’s equitable and cost-effective access to lifesaving medicines. Fiona: We are not just pill counters. There is an awful lot of background knowledge that builds into the decision of whether a medicine is the right medicine for an individual, and that is the responsibility of both the prescriber - whether that is a doctor or a nurse prescriber or a dentist or any of the other prescribing professions - and pharmacists themselves if we are advising a person to take a medicine over the counter without a prescription. So, the decision making process that goes on in the background of what’s going to be safe for a particular individual in a particular circumstance, and alongside all of their other health conditions and all the other medicines that they might be taking – that’s the complex part of being a pharmacist, and the interesting part. We start with a really intricate knowledge of drugs and the effect of drugs right down to the cellular level and the chemical level so we have to start out with a brain that loves science. But we’re also a very socially oriented profession as well. So it’s this interface between the science of managing disease and treating illness, and the human interface of helping people understand how to get the best effect out of their medicines. Page | 1

Narrator: With the explosion of information available electronically, clients can become very well informed about their health, but unfortunately misinformed and alarmed. Pharmacists are a front-line source of balanced information. Fiona: We have a strong sense of supporting our health professional colleagues, so supporting doctors in, making safe decisions about medicines and ensuring that patient care is not compromised, and in supporting nursing staff in how medicines should be administered correctly. And, so we’re really there as a as a parallel care giver, and we work very closely, with those other professions to ensure that medicines are used safely. And there’s obviously there’s a strong um code of ethics about how we behave with patients, about how we comply with the law. There is very strict law around how medicines can be sold and marketed, and so we combine both this scientific background with a very strong sense of evidence and a sense of the law and what we can and can’t do and also that human interface with both our colleagues and then with patients themselves. In the bigger picture, there’s a concept we call pharmaceutical care that’s about that whole cycle of taking care of a person and how medicines fit into that. Narrator: This cycle of care begins when the decision is made to treat a condition with medication – whether this is a medicine a person buys ‘over the counter’ without a doctor’s prescription, or when a doctor or other prescribing health professional is considering what treatment would be most appropriate for a particular patient. Pharmacists are available to advise prescribers, particularly when complex medication regimens put a person at risk of drug interactions or sideeffects. Patient safety is at the core of pharmacy practice. Fiona: Most people are probably aware of a pharmacist as the person that they walk into the chemist shop on the street or in the shopping centre, but there are all sorts of different avenues that a pharmacist can take in their career. So certainly community pharmacy, that element, is a really large proportion of the profession. And that face to face interaction with, with patients or clients in the community pharmacy. But there are a lot of specialist pharmacists as well. Hospital pharmacy, in a way is a specialty. And within both those arms of the profession, we have people that specialise in either different disease states, such as oncology or radiotherapy, and there are pharmacists that specialise with particular patient groups, so some pharmacist become specialists in paediatric medicines or in aged care. And then others take, more of a administrative background role, so deciding what medicines might be the best medicines to even be licensed in Australia, or used in particular settings, so very much a policy and decision making role. We’ve got pharmacists that specialise just in drug information so if you need some really high level information, you ring a drug information specialist and they’re the ones on the computer with all the different databases and the you know, specific searches that they do to really target down to specialist information. Some pharmacists then go into research, and look at maybe drug design or development of the actual chemical itself or the formulation, the product design, so the best way of getting the medicine into a person. And lots of research around the social aspects of how and why people take medicines the way that they do. Working with colleagues from other professions it’s really satisfying. It’s satisfying to know that your specific or your detailed knowledge of a particular area contributes to care. And to have your knowledge respected and heard and to know that it contributes. To learn more from your colleagues as well, and have a better understanding of the holistic care of a patient, so to understand why a Page | 2

person might have the health beliefs that they have. A lot of that you can really appreciate that when you hear that from your colleagues that are trained in perhaps different areas, like social work or psychology, that have a more social understanding of the care of a person and of their experience of wellness and disease. It makes the job so much more interesting when you learn more about disease, more about health, more about people by working in teams. The most challenging thing about being a pharmacist. The most interesting - thing I suppose is that there is always something more to learn about medicines, there’s always more medicines. We never run out of something to talk about. We have the more we learn about disease, the more we learn about how disease occurs, the more interesting it gets, and the more we understand about medicines. One of the challenging things is keeping up to date. It’s hard, you know. You never stop learning, you never stop reading, you can never sit back and say I know it all. You have to commit yourself to say this is, this is lifelong. It’s lifelong learning. You can’t walk away from that - or you don’t end up providing good care. So the most challenging thing is, making time to continue to learn. Narrator: Every year, an average of 24 completely new drugs are approved for use, and dozens of changes to the way existing medicines should be best used are published. Fiona: The best thing about being a pharmacist for me – it’s the little things. It’s knowing at the end of the day that you have made a difference, even if it is little differences, to a person’s overall care – they leave - hopefully they leave the interaction that they had with you a little better than they came to you. Even if it’s small ways, you have found to make - their medicines more tolerable. You’ve given them some advice that has reassured them. In small ways you make a difference all day long to a person’s overall health and that’s really satisfying.

Page | 3...