Tom Simpson - Charting the Course of Pharmacy: A Journey from Intern to Leader

Tom Simpson is the President, Society of Hospital Pharmacists of Australia and Executive Director, Statewide Hospital Pharmacy Tasmania, and has held positions as Chair, Statewide Pharmacy Executive Committee, the Tasmanian Minister’s Health Council and the Pharmacy Board of Tasmania.

Tom is a member of the SHPA Leadership and Management Specialty Practice Leadership Committee and holds a conjoint position as Senior Clinical Lecturer with the University of Tasmania School of Pharmacy.

Tom was awarded 2018 Tasmanian Pharmacist of the Year and the 2019 SHPA Medal of Merit, recognising outstanding contribution to pharmacy practice locally and nationally.

You can find Tom Simpson on LinkedIn.

Do you have questions about your pharmacy career? Then contact us or meet our team.

Transcript

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Your Pharmacy Career podcast proudly brought to you by Raven's Recruitment Australia's Pharmacy recruitment agency

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spotlights the Myriad of career options available to pharmacists your host Kristi Lee Patterson and her esteemed

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guests will be sharing invaluable career advice that you can Implement at any stage of your career

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Journey welcome to your Pharmacy career podcast where we explore the Myriad of paths and opportunities within the world of

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Pharmacy I'm your host Kristi Lee Patterson today we're joined by a distinguished figure in the pharmacy

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sector Tom Simpson Tom is the 2018 Tasmanian pharmacist of the Year

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recipient of the 2019 shpa medal of Merit and the current president of the

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Society of Hospital Pharmacists Australia with over two decades of experience in senior health executive

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roles throughout Tasmania at the Department of Health and in the areas of ealth strategy and Hospital Pharmacy Tom

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welcome to the show and thank you for taking the time to join us today thank you very much Kristi Lee it's lovely to

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be with you now to start off with I thought you could maybe share with us the journey that led you to become the

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2018 Tasmanian pharmacist of the year and the middle of Merit award winner is

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quite prestigious Awards uh yeah if you could share with us that journey and um

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give us some insight as to yeah what inspired you to step into these leadership roles that led to these

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Awards my intern year was the year 2000s you know nearly a quarter of a century

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ago and I certainly when I was a pharmacy intern I didn't have aspirations to to end up in leadership

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roles nor to um you know to win medals and accolades that's that's been a lovely thing um along the way I guess I

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always wanted to have an impact uh and that's probably been something that's driven my career and you know like a lot

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of early career pharmacists you know the impact you have is the one-on-one patient after patient interactions where

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you solve a problem that they have uh and as your career progresses you get

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that opportunity to solve bigger problems uh that where where you know you solve the one problem that might

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take you months or or years uh and that solves the problem for thousands of patients so that they never have to have

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that problem again or or make systems better better within hospitals so um I guess it's been a journey where I sought

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to to try and make things make things better and have impact along the way um

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those those medals were were wonderful things uh to to be awarded in my intern

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year I sat in um in the shpa National Conference in in the plenary hall there and watched these other people being

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awarded the medal of Merit and the fredj Boyd and and it was just completely alien to me that that would be something

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that that might happen to me the Tasmania pharmacist of the year is a lovely award too because it's it's it's

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a tetrapartite award uh bestowed by the University of Tasmania the PSA the shpa

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and the pharmacy Guild uh in Tasmania and so that had you know real meaning to me to be recognized by by the by the

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sector effectively for um for having that impact on Pharmacy services and and

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medication safety very exciting I definitely understand what you mean when you're a

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student you see these amazing people come in and speak at University and you just think oh wow how am ever going to

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achieve that what inspired you to step into these leadership roles did you look

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at these people at University and think I want to be like them one day or was it

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just you just took roll after roll that kind of landed in your lap uh look it's I guess it's kind of a

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combination on the one hand I had the people around me uh kind of telling me I should go for some of these

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opportunities you know I think a lot of people don't know what they're capable of and and if you got it you know good

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network of people around you they can they can help guide you towards those opportunities you know I've said in in a

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number of settings you know just how how impactful my wife and and cooworker uh

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Katherine has been on my professional development you know as well as all the other aspects of Life of course but you

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know she was one of those people who really saw I guess potential in me that I hadn't worked out that I had and would

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kind of um egg me on to go for these things but I think you know also it is

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having that bigger network uh of people that you can interact with you know I didn't look at those people and say wow

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I could be just like them I I didn't think I could but having people like that you know those luminaries of the

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profession uh and just being able to be part of that Network that includes them

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you know it kind of rubs off on you when you when you see the way that these these people think and you get the chance to interact with them uh you know

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at conference after conference or or whatever that that that's certainly been a been hugely impactful on me having

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having something that's part of my career that's bigger than just me uh and my immediate impact to to be part of I

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think that's great advice and I know the very first conference I ever went to I

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was a uh Pharmacy intern and when I was at Uni I just wanted my bit of paper

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because I'd done another degree beforehand so wasn't interested in going to Napster and those type of events and

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I definitely underestimated the value that those events can bring you in your career uh but yeah my first one was an

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AP and it just blew me away and I was very inspired and I'm so glad I did

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because I think that it definitely changed my trajectory um and re-engaged that that

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passion inside me as well for why I wanted to be a pharmacist so I think if

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there's any younger pharmacists uh that are listening to this or maybe you're a more experienced

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pharmacist and you haven't been to one of these conferences in a long time definitely would recommend to attend

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even looking at conferences outside your conf uh your comfort zone uh I actually

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went to a shpa event and um I was a community pharmacist but I yeah was

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asked to go on behalf of the PSA and it was really valuable I learned a lot about um the hospital pharmacy industry

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that I didn't know and made some really great connections there so I think sometimes you can learn a lot from

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outside your immediate Network as well um and by stepping out and interacting

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with different people you're right it does kind of rub off rub off on you I I graduated from my Pharmacy degree not

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passionate about Pharmacy you know I saw it as a degree that led to a job and my next step was to get an intern job and

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to do that job passionate wouldn't have been a word that I would have used Look at me now I it's it's kind of what I

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what I live and breathe and a lot of that I can trace back to you know to to that very first uh shpa conference that

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I went to mm 2000 suddenly realizing just how rich this world was uh that we

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inhabit you know across across all sectors Community Hospital Academia research Etc uh I thought I'd enrolled

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in a degree that gave me the ability to do one thing and what I discovered there was that there's dozens of different

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things that I can be with with this degree uh and this career oh it's very exciting uh just

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when I look back to when I was at University to now and that wasn't that long ago uh but yeah it's a very

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different place Pharmacy but it can give you so many different um career

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opportunities which you don't really get that in other other um Industries but I

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know when I first entered the pharmac industry I thought there was only that the two ways to go was community and

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hospital but I thought that was just to be a pharmacist like on the ward or a pharmacy but now

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there's even within those two areas there's so many different branches you can you can go which is really

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exciting and I think that kind of leads me into my next question I'd love to

8:13

pick your brain about leadership and management within the pharmacy sector

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and yeah where do you see the role of Pharmacists evolving I guess under your

8:24

leadership at the shpa leadership in Pharmacy has changed a lot since I was an intern you know 23 years ago uh the

8:32

skills that your leaders would would impart to you were you know the ability to dispense a PBS script in a in a

8:38

timely fashion and lots of process and procedural things our teams now are so

8:44

large and we kind of understood understand now how you get change made

8:49

uh that it isn't just teaching people how to do a task it requires um a collaborative way of

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working it requires emotional intelligence which is something that you know that was a term that probably

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relatively new back when I enrolled in far my Pharmacy degree they just started to to do testing for emotional aptitude

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and and emotional control in um in medicine and other degrees back then uh and it's just become so much more

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important uh now that we are collaborators we work not just with other Pharmacists and pharmacy

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technicians and assistants but we work with medical nursing Allied Health staff uh and of course patients uh to to bring

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about change so I think that's that's probably the the the most dramatic shift that I've seen in how we think about

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leadership shpa has recently partnered with a training provider to offer leadership training that's relevant to

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Pharmacists and you know a huge part of the that Focus there is on understanding yourself understanding others and Lead

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others whether you have positional authority over them or not you How you manage with influence and uh Grace and

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empathy uh to to bring about change so yeah very committed to that Journey when

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you mentioned about being timely just had a flashback to a pharmacy I worked at many years ago and it was all about

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timeliness and they actually had a little timer on the baskets of on the

10:14

prescription so as soon as someone handed in their script it was time to the to the time and you weren't allowed to turn the timer off until the

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pharmacist checked it and that's quite the um very intense I worked in

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community for probably close to a decade I certainly remember that first conversation where which a pharmacy

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manager had with me saying you know you're just too slow you've got to pick up the pace I didn't know how to take

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that feedback at the time but yeah it was it was part of the focus it it still is you know we've still got to be

10:43

efficient in yes in our jobs difference between efficiency and um being fast for

10:49

the fake sake of being fast um to the detriment of um good clinical outcomes

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but I also wanted to touch on the emotional intelligence side of things

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and the understanding of others that's something that I think is really important especially in Pharmacy we

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we're in the business of people and whether that's customers or

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patients uh or our staff or our colleagues and it's really important

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that we see the people for who they are and I think the traditional management way of things is show up 9: to 5 or 8:30

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to 6:30 in some places um and you need

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to kind of leave who you are at the door and be this different person in the

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workplace um is that something that you've seen a transition from did did

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you have that experience and yeah where do you see yeah that leadership and that

11:53

people part of leadership having an impact I have a hard time being anyone other than me

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in the settings that I'm that I'm in For Better or For Worse it's very important we are all the authentic person that we

12:05

are if you're coming to work and trying to be a different person the odds are of getting it right 100% of the time you

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know they're not high you've got to be um authetic to yourself as an employer

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myself you know I've got a couple of hundred staff uh what I want for staff is that they can turn up we are in a

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healthcare industry where we've got to be a person uh who has empathy and connect with people and and you know you

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can't do that if you're burnt out yourself you can't provide empathetic care to a patient if in your head uh you

12:37

are not in in a Zone where you can you know feel what they're going through we want people to be able to to go home and

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have hobbies have you know have time with their family recharge and come to work the next day as as the person that

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they are with the empathy uh and self-awareness and and that understanding of the lives that other

12:55

people lead that you've got to take that into the workplace I think whether it's a patient in the bed or a patient

13:01

standing in front of you in the dispensary or just a coworker who needs to be treated you know like like a like

13:07

a peer and an equal by someone that also ties into the the leadership or program that

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a said cap is developing uh I'd love to understand

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more about I guess initiative or maybe you could even call it a reform a

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reforming of the industry um uh so for those that are listening have not heard of a cap it's Australian New Zealand

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College of advanc Pharmacy and it's a new initiative with this

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shpa and for those that are listening that uh I guess a community pharmacist

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they might question why on Earth is the shpa doing something for Community

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Pharmacy uh but I know that the the an cap I guess program is based very

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much on what the hospital pharmacy program is with the residencies and things like that so yeah I'd love to

14:07

understand what your vision is for this and yeah how is this really going to

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impact and change the future of Pharmacy you asked me uh a little while ago um

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about kind of the beginning of my career and the fact that I thought I just did agree did a degree that um that got me the one job uh because I don't think

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back then we had a great way of describing what a structure in Pharmacy could look like we all kind of

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understand Community Pharmacy you know that when you apply for the pharmacy degree you know that that's one of the job options uh but you don't know what

14:38

the structure looks like and how it looks like to progress develop and grow in that or any other setting and ansap

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is part of that answer ansap is is saying here is a career recognition program that aligns with the the

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personal development and the kind of career structure that a pharmacist uh can can have you know so we've always

14:58

known pH we have we have an internship and then you got you know 45 years of practice as an unsupervised autonomous

15:05

person but the reality is is more nuanced than that isn't it you know the we always talk about now that that first

15:11

thousand days of practice that really matters and that's where shpa invested in residency programs in saying the last

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time you get really good structured detailed feedback shouldn't be on day 365 of your intern year it's you know

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it's got to still be there on day 366 and in fact it should keep on going and you build people who have lifelong

15:31

ability to grow themselves develop the skills that they need in their workplace if they have that ability to take

15:37

feedback from others and feedback from themselves and integrate that together and so that's been a hugely important

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part of the residency programs that we've uh run and accredited over the last six or seven years and that's kind

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of formed the um one of the kind of main ingredients for the ansap uh program so

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ansap says okay you've got your intern pharmacist your career structure on top of that very much mirroring the medical

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model is you go into residency uh and uh you develop the the skills of a of a

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robust generalist with a foundational skill uh that spans Pharmacy uh you you

16:10

can then go in go and be a registar uh and maybe start to specialize not

16:15

necessarily specialty um can mean means lots of things to different people as pharmacists we still always have that

16:21

that that General skill set underpinning but there are certainly people who work in specialty practice areas and that can

16:27

include you know Hospital Centric settings I guess like you know Critical Care Medicine but includes a whole range

16:34

of other settings in which you can start to develop specialty skills too uh like uh geriatrics and and Age Care like

16:41

transitions of care and home medicines reviews and and things like that so there a range of specialy practice areas

16:47

that um people can develop in any setting and the next level on from registr is consultant where you can

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demonstrate actually you have the impact that you are having is so much uh more than the impact that you had on on day

16:58

one your career it's not just the individual transaction with a patient it's a a broader impact so ancap allows

17:05

us to recognize people at various different levels of their career journey and also to to recognize the specialy

17:11

practice areas that they've gained some of those skills and experience in so I'm a fellow of ansap uh and my specialty

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practice area is in lead leadership and management but I also work with people who have uh medicine Supply you know

17:25

what dispensing is their specialty practice area I work with Pharmacy educators who've got education or

17:30

research or both as their specialy practice areas through to clinical pharmacists in infectious diseases or

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oncology who again have that recognition in in those areas so I think now we what

17:44

we can do with ancap is start to say what does what does a career Journey look like in Pharmacy well it depends on

17:49

where you want to take it but here are the options and here's Pathways to get there if you know and you're a fourthe

17:55

pharmacist thinking I would love to be an oncology pharmacist providing chemotherapy related care to a patient

18:01

you can now see what that career Journey might look like and what you need to do along the way and that can happen in any

18:07

setting it doesn't need to be in uh an educational setting or in a a workplace

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Le Residency program like you might find the hospital the ansap program opens that up to an independent pathway that

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allows pharmacists to complete those educational experiences without being enrolled in in um residency programs I

18:26

think the lines are more blurred than they've ever been in the best possible way around what our what pharmacy looks

18:32

like it isn't just two non- diverging separate Lanes on a highway of hospital

18:38

and Community uh you know as we start to to blur beautifully in the middle uh

18:43

around transitions of care and support for patients uh prehospital and post hospital and do inreach and Outreach

18:50

programs at that side of the equation as well as GP practice and and embedded

18:55

pharmacists into aged care it's not the building in which you provide care that really matters it's the the nature of

19:01

the care that you're providing and and I think that's what why ansap is something that that transcends uh what

19:08

Professional Organization you're a member of or what building you're you're practicing in I love that I think that's

19:13

so important and it's something that I've always thought about uh just throughout my career is yeah why do we

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segregate the two parts it's one profession and it's yeah it's literally

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just a building really where you're working but the the clinical um

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knowledge is is still there you're just applying it differently and when I saw

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the Ana cap come out I was quite excited um to see that it was available for all

19:44

Pharmacists and um just to disclose I am also a fellow which I did not think I would be

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a fellow I thought a fellow was someone that you had to like I don't know you have white hair and wearing long robes

19:57

or something like that so I was very grateful to to receive that um and once

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in leadership and management and Community Pharmacy um but I've seen that there's a quite a number of other people

20:10

that maybe they've got theirs in mental health or um Wound Care Management or um

20:15

what have you and I think that's really exciting for Community pharmacists

20:21

because I think the career trajectories just always been okay well pharmacist

20:26

early career pharmacists pharmacist manager or pic and then an owner or yeah maybe

20:33

you go to Hospital Pharmacy but care hospital phaces always kind of had those

20:38

I guess progression Pathways that are quite well defined uh but I think the really

20:45

opportune thing here is that whatever your passion is you can actually apply

20:51

that and that could be your Specialties so um for example the um I don't know if

20:56

you know of Anderson but she's a calls herself the Spectrum pharmacist and um

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is very passionate about um neurode Divergent people and um from a personal

21:07

experience and uh I think pharmacists have this unique ability that they can

21:13

choose their specialty um and I think that's really um a great opportunity

21:21

because you can actually Target it to maybe your demographics or uh the setting that you're in so whether it's

21:27

age care or hospital or even within Hospital you've got your different um disease States and we're quite lucky

21:34

that we we kind of create our own future which is really exciting look I think wherever there's a

21:41

medical specialty there's a pharmacy specialty that um that that has to align with that that's that's that's how

21:47

Healthcare works now and I think you know the we also need to to reflect the role of our generalists too um not just

21:54

as well as the people who are generalists the you know the true General and there's lots of them out there you know they make the workforce

22:02

possible because we've got people who can put into any area and they can do anything and and we recognize both the

22:08

clinical generalist speal uh specialty and the uh the non-clinical uh people have worked in in what we're calling

22:14

meds management roles which might be education or digital health or leadership or or other roles that are

22:20

not patient facing but are just generalist across the um the system roles but I think a lot of what

22:26

pharmacists bring to their specialty area is that generalist knowledge you

22:31

know I work with um mental health pharmacists who work as part of the psychiatric traing traing team in acute

22:37

Health they bring a very useful lens on you know what's the Contemporary treatment for various different um uh

22:44

psychiatric disorders but they're also the go-to for the medical team of how do we treat osteoporosis these days you

22:49

know what what's first line for heart failure now because they they bring that generalist knowledge of of how medicines

22:55

are used uh in patients that the medical team uh needs needs access to uh so it's

23:01

it's really wonderful to see people being rewarded for the skills that they bring Beyond just it being about for us

23:08

as pharmacists having a career Journey it's also something that I think our patients value too you know if you are a

23:15

a patient who's booked in to see to a clinic to see uh an an obstetrician you

23:21

kind of expected they're fellow of rans COG I it's kind of a minimum expectation really if you're a patient who's who's

23:26

uh needing treatment with for oncology for for a neoplasm you want

23:32

to know that they're a fellow of that of that college and I think it's a becomes

23:37

a public health thing that our patients also deserve to know that the person who's making their chemo or the person

23:42

who's providing advice in that specialty area uh has the skills and experience that are relevant to the to the care

23:48

that they're receiving as well so it kind of ticks a lot of boxes uh for making it easier for our patients and

23:54

easier for our pharmacists to to know the impact that they can have I like that especially the the impact of

24:02

what they can have on the patients someone once said to me you can have 10 years experience or you can have one

24:10

year experience 10 years over um and you're not growing you're not learning

24:16

and you're not raising the bar and pushing yourself this is actually about

24:21

um yeah raising those standards about the quality of care for patients is that

24:26

sort of part of the vision for cap as well absolutely so we've got two

24:31

pathways through which people can demonstrate uh the skills that they're developing and the self-reflective

24:37

experiences uh that they're that they're having along the way on their on their ansap Journey one of those Pathways is

24:43

the traditional workplac Le residency registar ship model uh and as an

24:49

employer myself I I've had I've employed people through residency programs uh where you know you take people on a on a

24:55

2-year accelerated Journey uh through residency and and what you get out the other end is someone who's really

25:01

accelerated their own personal professional uh development they they've got skills there that that are now

25:07

exceed those of the people that they that um that they went through uni with because of that they've had all that

25:13

that investment and feedback but you know that's that's resource intensive to provide there are something like 500

25:19

people across the country who've been through or are currently going through some of those work workplace Le

25:24

residency and regist programs mostly in hospitals but the other path way is the independent pathway which says there are

25:30

other ways of achieving those same developments and we've we've built ansap around what we call learning

25:36

experiences uh not not quite the same as a CPD point but our learning experience is an individual discrete activity that

25:42

has uh learning outcomes and broken down into learning experiences you do yourself learning experiences uh that

25:48

you where you collaborate with others and get feedback and learning experiences that are assessed you build

25:54

up that library of these learning experiences across all of the domains of um uh practice as a as a pharmacist you

26:00

know get the National Competency standards and along your journey you'll reach the threshold to say here are the

26:05

learning experiences that mean I've developed myself and I'm on to the next stage we do at the moment have a

26:11

pressional recognition pathway that basically that that is much more linked to how much time you've served in

26:17

particular roles uh and that's because you don't just launch something like ansap and say to the world here's the

26:23

new standard to meet you've got to actually recognize well you know 10 years ago someone didn't know that they need to dect these learning experiences

26:30

so but we still actually need to be able to offer a recognition pathway for that for those people so we have a what we're

26:35

calling our Foundation program uh which is uh opened until uh April which allows

26:40

people to get prior recognition for the their experienes as a pharmacist um and to

26:47

gain that same recognition as resident registar consultant in those various areas with just different thresholds to

26:53

meet but long term I think the view absolutely has to be you know that the pharmacists providing that patient care

26:59

uh can can demonstrate that they meet um the patient's expectations that they that they someone

27:06

who knows uh the area that they're working in and has has the skill level commensurate with that absolutely I love

27:12

that I think that's so important because ultimately at the end of the day most people I speak to that are pharmacists

27:17

got into Pharmacy because they wanted to help people it's having that at core

27:22

which is really important as we wrap up I would like to also

27:28

understand or pick your brain about what you think some of the biggest challenges or opportunities are within Pharmacy in

27:35

the coming years and how do you think pharmacists can can prepare for that so there's lots of talk about scope

27:42

practice and lots of changes coming for Community Pharmacy like is that even affecting

27:48

Hospital Pharmacy I I I personally don't know I'd love to understand what that

27:53

looks like um and yeah how can pharmacists prepare for these changes

27:58

that's a big question it's tempting to to take a line from where we are now and project that forward and say we'll

28:04

probably still be dealing with you know shortages and and and a Workforce that's incredibly uh in demand and I think

28:11

those two things will probably stay constant for for quite a while to come yeah we are at a point of evolving as

28:17

scopa practice and in the UK of course in 2026 every graduate of a pharmacy

28:23

degree will be a a prescriber an autonomous prescriber I think think the mistake

28:28

would be to say well let's just copy and paste that and and and do that here right now I think you've got to go through that that there's a journey

28:35

you've got to go through of expanding scope that allows us to expand our training structures and and work with

28:41

the other disciplines in parallel with that but on the other hand you know the health system can't wait uh for us to do

28:48

that at a snail's pace so yeah the rapid expansion of expanded scope I like to think in in in hospital we've got

28:54

serious runs on on the board here you know um one of the the project I was involved in 15 years ago now at um one

29:01

of the hospitals here in Tasmania it was around pharmacist initiated pathology tests and um having a micro

29:07

credentialing program for uh pharmacists to be able to order relevant uh

29:12

pathology tests for patient has been admitted you know you want to know what their full blood counts doing because they they were on meth trexate before

29:18

they came in or you want to know their renal function there's runs on the board there I guess the huge one for us is

29:24

collaborative prescribing where there's now 11 12 years experience in Australia

29:30

of Pharmacists putting pen to paper to chart medicines for a paper following collaborative discussions with medical

29:37

staff and that's now kind of swept the country it's in pretty much every state and territory certainly in my home state

29:43

of Tasmania it's it's kind of a routine element of care there to have pharmacists putting pen to paper on the drug chart and we've seen uh South

29:51

Australia uh and and also my state of Tasmania uh um moving legislation to

29:56

allow pharmacists to actually do do that without requiring the doctor's co- signature and actually you know that that step closer to the pharmacist uh

30:03

semi-autonomously prescribing I think the the Magnificent thing about those collaborative models which we've seen

30:10

success with uh is just how they're kind of win-win win- winwin in that when you

30:16

have the pharmacist and the medical officer sitting down together to work out a treatment plan for a complex

30:21

patient and you know the average patient who who who we provide those collaborating collaborative prescribing

30:26

services to in our s the average patient is on N9 or 10 medicines they're in their 70s or 80s by the time they're

30:33

discharged they'll be on at least one probably two more medicines and and you know they might have had three or four different changes to drugs or doses in

30:40

between that so we're dealing with complex patients uh and so having the doctor and the medical officer sit down

30:46

together and say what's the plan here and the pharmacist is able to inform that they then transcribe that plan you

30:53

that's what that's what the drug chart is it's a it's a communication tool as much as anything

30:58

not only does the pharmacist get more exposure to expanded scope and decision-making the doctor gets upskilled as well um all of the do

31:05

doctors who have been involved in Victorian trials and Tasmanian trials by and large reported increased personal

31:11

satisfaction for them because you know in hospitals It's usually the junior medical officer's job to chart medicines

31:17

and so the consultant will just bark and order at them and say you know chart them up some ke and met and they'll walk away and normally their job is to work

31:23

out what that means now they've got the pharmacist to work with and and who can help them to interpret what what that

31:29

instruction meant so the patient so the doctor wins the pharmacist wins the patient wins they spend 10% less time in

31:36

hospital uh that's a lot of time for for the injection of one or two hours of pharmacist time at the beginning that's

31:42

a lot of Health System time we're saving and just patients life that we're returning to them no one wants to be in

31:47

a bed longer than they have to if we can get them out quicker the better and so by doing that work up front everyone

31:53

wins so seeing that now kind of Ripple out and saying okay what does that look like in aged care settings where we know

31:59

it's hard to get uh medical staff on the floor uh or in Regional and Rural care so we see collaborative prescribing as

32:05

kind of the the Forefront of U of expanded scope we've got a lot of great experience there I was able to to show

32:12

Mark Butler Federal Minister for health uh and Emma McBride the assistant Minister for Rural health and suicide

32:18

prevention uh they were was able to show them what collaborative prescribing looks like in in two different hospitals

32:24

in two different states and the wonderful take-home that they saw thought was that yeah the pharmacist was

32:30

doing a great job and feeling really good about themselves but the medical staff too was saying I wish I'd had this

32:36

when I was a junior doctor because this is a much better way of learning how to treat patients uh than the old ways so

32:42

those those ministers really took home the value of the pharmacist uh input into that care that's such a wonderful

32:49

wonderful testimonial there and I think that's really important because I know

32:55

just in my own practice when I've worked with GPS or other medical professionals

33:01

they they do appreciate it um and I appreciate that what they do as well and so having that collaboration I think is

33:08

is the key and it's only going to benefit the patients ultimately that's

33:13

who we're here for and really if if we put them at the center of everything

33:18

that we do we can't really go wrong there now we're getting to the end of

33:24

the podcast it's been a great conversation and I feel like I could yes

33:29

speak to you all day on on many of these issues and and topics and hopefully

33:35

you'll join us again on this podcast or maybe on a future season or episode but I'd love to know what your parting

33:42

wisdom would be or your advice to a young pharmacist that is maybe they're

33:50

starting to feel not as passionate I know I've been there and you said yourself earlier in the podcast that you

33:55

were you were there as well and there has I guess been some negativity around

34:01

um the pharmacy industry in in general um but I feel like that's always there there's always this really big high and

34:08

this real low um no matter where you've been in your career but what would your

34:13

advice be to them as they move forward in in their career yeah look I guess just a couple

34:20

of of things that I'd probably tell my younger self you know one I was in a huge hurry it's okay for things to take

34:27

their time uh and you know it's not it's not a Sprint to the Finishing Line it's you

34:32

know it's a it's a career that's got to last 45 years uh so yeah don't be in too

34:37

much of of a hurry I guess another thing is it's okay to take breaks you know I've had uh two or three breaks outside

34:43

of Pharmacy where I've worked in other roles you know in in the in my case in um in the health department in digital

34:50

health or or um policy roles and you know it's good to recharge you know I came back to Pharmacy and my I had a

34:57

renewed passion for for what I was doing so it's good to recharge and I guess the final thing you know early on in your

35:03

career it's it's hard to get that first opportunity to to show success you know

35:08

success is a snowballing isn't it it's um uh but you only get the chance to succeed if you're if you've proven that

35:14

you're worthy of it which which is a self-fulfilling prophecy so how do you get that that in uh and I think um

35:21

whilst it's good to be a nino5 worker and and that's what I I encourage you know the staff that I work with you know

35:27

do the hours paid for and you don't need to do anything more but by the same token it's it's also good to to get

35:32

involved and invested in things uh that that show you're doing more whether that's getting involved in professional

35:38

organizations and and events or projects in the workplace I was digging through

35:44

my shed uh a little while ago and I managed to find my grade eight school report card uh and you know lots of

35:50

things that it said were have remained true throughout my life including my that I should take things a bit more

35:56

seriously at times but one of the ones that really rang true was a teacher who said that Tom is not a nine-to-five

36:03

thinker uh and I think that that's been a constant in my career that you know even when I was early on in as an as an

36:09

intern and then an early career pharmacist I did I didn't stop thinking about work and what and the impact that

36:15

I could have and for you know 90% of the time fortunately having success you know not everything will succeed failures

36:21

inevitable it's happened to me probably as often as as success has had but that

36:27

that's uh I guess that's a lesson that I've leared that um putting a hand up getting involved and showing the

36:34

commitment to to achievement uh very important the fact that you're giving

36:39

that advice around I guess getting out there and and doing things outside of

36:45

your 9 to5 I know it's hard because you're tired and life gets busy but I

36:50

think it is important for uh people to have something else that they're doing

36:55

whether it's like you said if it's um a Professional Organization or it might

37:00

not even be anything to do with with Pharmacy it could maybe like playing the cello um or something like that who

37:07

knows and um having those other passions but they can even cross over into your

37:14

professional life and sometimes you don't understand it in the beginning uh

37:20

but I almost find that other things that I've kind of done on on the side or

37:25

career breaks or things that I've had they've actually led me somewhere down

37:31

the pharmacy path and at the time I didn't I thought it was oh I'm going to go do something different but then it

37:37

kind of adds value later in the track so I think that's great advice um to not be

37:42

afraid to to do those things and try those new things have a look at that and sort of kind of map out a few things of

37:50

of where you want to be and where you want to go and same for those pharmacists that are maybe looking to

37:56

transition into something different um maybe by looking at some of the other people that have I guess been awarded

38:03

fellowships in in certain areas maybe you can speak to them about how they got to where they were where they are and um

38:10

you can get some tips from them so thank you Tom for your time I really appreciate it it's been a great

38:16

discussion and I look forward to speaking to you again soon that would be lovely thanks so much for having

38:23

me you've been listening to Your Pharmacy Career podcast brought to you by Raven's Recruitment don't miss our next

38:30

episode where we continue to explore the multifaceted world of Pharmacy careers make sure to subscribe and share

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