On September 3, 1928 a pharmacist, Alexander Fleming, returned from a holiday to find mould growing in a Petri dish of staphylococcus bacteria in his laboratory.
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Fleming soon identified the mould produced a self-defence chemical that killed bacteria, naming the mould juice penicillin.
The discovery has been described as the 'single greatest victory ever achieved over disease', and in 1945 Fleming was awarded the Nobel Prize. In 2018 the antibiotic was reported to have saved an estimated 200 million lives.
Not all pharmacists are as well-known as Fleming but what is well known is the work they do and the service they provide to our community.
In the past the pharmacy profession covered mainly the compounding and manufacturing of medicines, but as the compounding functions were reduced the pharmacist's role mainly consisted of dispensing.
Times are slowly changing. No longer is a pharmacy a place to only pick up prescriptions, but a health destination where customers are offered healthcare and well-being advice and services.
The pharmacist's role can be further enhanced by giving them greater responsibility for general health and well-being.
The Pharmaceutical Society of Australia provides standards of practice, post graduate training programs, and advocates for pharmacists to care for their patients without current barriers so they are better equipped to address the healthcare needs of the Australian public.
In 2019 the Minister for Health Greg Hunt launched the 'pharmacists in 2023' vision to advance the role of pharmacists in Australia.
This report highlighted the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia's 11 actions for change which they believe will unlock pharmacists' potential and improve health outcomes for all Australians.
Among other things, the report identified that 95 per cent of residents in a residential aged care facility have at least one medicine-related problem with over 50 per cent prescribed potentially inappropriate medicines. There are also 250,000 medicine-related hospital admissions in Australia each year, half of which are preventable, costing the health system $1.4 billion.
Therefore, there is an urgent need for pharmacists to be empowered to lead interventions which prevent as many of these adverse effects as possible.
Medication errors occur when weak medication systems and/or human factors such as fatigue, poor environmental conditions or staff shortages affect prescribing, transcribing, dispensing, administration and monitoring practices, which can then result in severe harm and even death.
Approximately 10,000 Tasmanians go to the emergency department and 5000 are admitted each year because of problems with their medication.
We regularly hear of the problems with overcrowding and wait times in our emergency departments. I'm told this costs the Tasmanian health system $35 million each year excluding emergency department costs.
By empowering pharmacists to be the stewards of medication safety, the harm, over-use or under-use of medicines will be reduced, and so too will the costs.
Given the health workforce disparities, especially in medical practice, pharmacists utilising their full capabilities are likely to be most beneficial in rural and regional communities where access to health professionals is reduced compared to metropolitan areas. I can attest to this having worked in pharmacy in a rural area for many years.
Even in cities people are experiencing trouble accessing doctors due to surgery open hours and doctors being unable to see new patients because of their workload.
Pharmacists working as part of a collaborative care team, with delegated responsibility for continuing medicine supply and the prescribing and initiating of new medicines within the scope of their expertise, have the potential to substantially improve access to health care not only in rural and remote areas of Tasmania but also in the urban area.
In the lead up to the last election both Liberal and Labor committed to review the future role of pharmacists in the Tasmanian healthcare system. This review and the required changes could have an extraordinary impact on what our 898 registered pharmacists, 68 per cent of whom work in the private sector and 32 per cent in the public sector, do to support healthcare in Tasmania.
We are still waiting for the outcome of this review; it's important, and if there is no change to allow our pharmacists to do more, we face a major retention crisis for the profession, which will have significant impacts on patient care in Tasmania.
In the meantime, our 155 community pharmacies are the most frequently accessed and most accessible health destinations in the state, with over three million individual patients walking through their doors collecting an estimated nine million prescriptions in 2020.
Pharmacists are one of the most trusted professionals in Australia and it's time they were trusted by governments to do more within their expertise. They are trained, they are ready, they are willing, but they are still waiting. So too is the community.
- Tania Rattray, Independent MLC for McIntyre