Expanding role of Pharmacy

Pharmacists’ roles are expanding to practice in a variety of settings.  Although the role is evolving to provide direct care to patients as members of integrated health care provider teams, there are a number of barriers and challenges and required changes to rules and regulations to secure opportunities for pharmacists to perform these expanded roles.

Pharmacy Staff in the College of Medicine and Dentistry have been at the forefront of these initiatives, including immunizations, emergency and disaster medicine and travel health, being invited to present their research at International Conferences and attend a workshop as part of an international team discussing the way forward for pharmacist immunizations.

Professor Beverley Glass was invited to attend an International Immunization Workshop at the University of Waterloo (Canada) together with pharmacists from Australia, New Zealand, USA, UK and Canada. This invite came as a result of Beverley’s involvement with Prof Lisa Nissen from QUT in the Queensland Pharmacist Immunization Pilot, which resulted in the legislation changing to allow pharmacists to administer flu vaccinations in Australia.

Beverley also attended the World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine, while in Canada, where Pharmacy was an Inaugural Track and presented her research on the Impact of Cyclone Yasi on Antidepressant and Anxiolytic Medication Use in Affected Areas of North Queensland – co-authored by Prof Kim Usher, Mr. Joe Grasso and Mr. Mark Thomson who was the BPharm Honours student who undertook the study.

Assoc Prof Ian Heslop attended The 15^th Conference of the International Society of Travel Medicine (CISTM15) in Barcelona, Spain, where he was invited to co-present with Assoc Prof Karl Hess (Keck Graduate Institute School of Pharmacy, USA) on the topic of Pharmacist Pre-Travel Risk Assessments which was part of a pre-conference seminar entitled “The Pharmacist – A traveller’s first post of call”.

Ian is the Australasian Representative on the Pharmacist Professional Group Council of the International Society of Travel Health. Other members of the international Group who also presented in the seminar included Sheila Seed (USA), Derek Evans and Larry Goodyer (UK) and Lee Baker (South Africa).

Photo: Assoc Prof Ian Heslop (JCU) and Dr Sheila Seed (Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Healthcare Sciences) at CISTM15