Pharmacy

Video transcript

North West Pharmacy Director – Toby: As a pharmacist you can make a massive impact.

Pharmacist – Tayler: We’re involved in the decision-making process. We’re changing people’s lives.

Director of Pharmacy – Kelvin: To be a staff member of Queensland Health comes with a sense of pride, I find, because the community know who you are and what you do.

Pharmacy Intern – Zoe: I think, having the opportunity to do an internship with Queensland Health really broadens the horizons. You have a lot more opportunity to do education, do research and really work within a multi-disciplinary team.

Pharmacist – Tayler: I was working in a community pharmacy in Mount Isa, and I loved it. It was busy. It was hectic, but I was ready for a change. And there was a job going, so I applied. And I was successful. Interviewed terribly, absolutely terribly. And like they said, you know, it’s a learning curve, they expected it, it was an entry level position. And I’m so glad I did it. It was like a massive career change going from community to hospital, and I fell in love with the profession all over again.

South West Pharmacy Director – Mitchell: You have your patients who will come in quite often. So, you get to know these people quite well and you form that relationship with them.

Senior Pharmacist – Melanie: As an Aboriginal women in a workplace for Queensland Health, I felt quite supported in all of my roles. And in fact, it’s actually given me an opportunity to grow closer into my spirituality and connection to Aboriginal people.

Acting Director of Allied Health – Andrew: As you get further on in your career, it really starts to open up. And the opportunities are really endless. Myself, for an example, I couldn’t have ever envisioned working within the allied health space and leading eight different professions. That pathway’s so natural within such a large system.

Pharmacist – Tayler: We can call anyone that we need to and everyone in the discipline is so friendly and willing to help. It’s fantastic.

Pharmacy Assistant – Ellie: There’s a lot more to being a pharmacy assistant and working at a hospital than I originally thought.

Pharmacy Intern – Zoe: Uni teaches you so much. But once you’re out there actually practising, you learn so much more. And I’m really excited to see the scope of what I can learn.

Pharmacist - Melanie: I would say, go for it. If there’s a particular interest that you have for anything related to pharmacy, there are so many opportunities within Queensland Health. So, I’d absolutely support that decision.

Video transcript

North West Pharmacy Director – Toby: As a pharmacist, you can make a massive impact on individual peoples’ lives.

South West Pharmacy Director – Mitchell: You have your patients who will come in quite often. So, you get to know these people quite well. And you form that relationship with them.

Pharmacist – Tayler: We’re involved in the decision-making process so we’re changing peoples’ lives.

Acting Director of Allied Health – Andrew: People are used to traveling. So, when they are delivered services in their local community, they’re very thankful and appreciative, and you’re highly valued. So, it’s incredibly rewarding.

Acting Director of Allied Health – Andrew: So, my name is Andrew. I’m a pharmacist. I’m the Acting Director of Allied Health at the North West Hospital and Health Service.

Pharmacist – Tayler: My name is Tayler. I’m a pharmacist out here in Roma, in the southwest. And I’ve been out here for about 3 years now.

South West Pharmacy Director – Mitchell: My name’s Mitchell. I’m located in Charleville and my current role is the Director of Pharmacy for the South West Hospital and Health Service.

North West Pharmacy Director – Toby: Hi. I’m Toby. I’m a pharmacist who works in Mount Isa for the North West Hospital and Health Service. I have been working out there nearly eight years now.

Pharmacist – Tayler: Prior to coming to Roma, I was in Mount Isa. And that’s where I got into hospital pharmacy. I loved it. It was great. The people were friendly. You felt like you were helping people. You walk down the street, people say hello to you.

Acting Director of Allied Health – Andrew: I grew up in a rural community. So, I understood, and from an early age, the complexities that accessing health for people in rural communities are. And I really wanted to contribute to bettering that and providing access to care.

Pharmacist – Tayler: We have a phone. We can call anyone that we need to. And everyone in the discipline is so friendly and willing to help. It’s fantastic.

North West Pharmacy Director – Toby: In rural areas, it’s just the nature of work really. It’s that if you’re a bit of a doer, people seem to come back to you to fix problems that might be a bit foreign or a bit out of your expertise, sometimes. And that’s quite a good challenge.

Acting Director of Allied Health – Andrew: It’s a very laid-back lifestyle. It’s easy to get to work, the work is really enjoyable. That leaves you with, you know, plenty of energy to do things on the weekend, especially if you’ve got kids.

North West Pharmacy Director – Toby: It’s such a good way to see, like, get exposure to what happens in those rural areas. So, you can see firsthand how diverse and interesting the work can be.

Video transcript

Pharmacy Intern – Zoe: Having the opportunity to do an internship with Queensland Health really broadens the horizons. You have a lot more opportunity to do education, do research and really work within a multidisciplinary team.

Pharmacy Intern – Sara: You see how impactful a pharmacist is on the overall running of a hospital.

Pharmacy Intern – Zoe: I’m Zoe. I’m an intern pharmacist at Caboolture Hospital.

Pharmacy Intern – Sara: I’m Sara. I am just graduating my pharmacy degree, and I’m going to be an intern at Caboolture Hospital next year.

Pharmacy Clinical Educator – Karl: So, the pathway from students to registered pharmacist is quite diverse amongst different students. So, most people start with their placements, and then they end up doing their internship.

Pharmacy Intern – Zoe: So, I studied pharmacy later in life. I finished my degree and started my internship with Queensland Health at Caboolture Hospital. I’m finishing – or towards the end of my internship now – with hopes to stay at Caboolture Hospital.

Pharmacy Intern - Sara: I did a couple of Queensland Health placements, both at the Caboolture Hospital and rural, at Charleville Hospital. Went on quite a few rotations with different pharmacists, which was really cool. You get to see how everyone does their day-to-day job and pick up little bits here and there of how you might practise as a future pharmacist. Went to ED. Went to mental health ward, which is my favourite. Spent some time in paeds and maternity, which is very, very cute. But you kind of get a good all round picture. And I saw myself working in that environment long term, working collaboratively with other pharmacists and other health professionals as well.

Pharmacy Intern – Zoe: Being on placements as a student, it’s really a great opportunity to be able to communicate with your peers. So, it could be the intern pharmacist that is at your placement. It could be the Clinical Educator. It could be the Director of Pharmacy. But breaking down those barriers and not being nervous to have conversations with them about where you can better yourself in applications, or how you can sort of get through that hurdle of finishing uni and securing a job at the end as an intern pharmacist.

Pharmacy Clinical Educator – Karl: Be resilient. And if you don’t get the first position, often you might be really, really close. It’s really not personal. I find that people sometimes say, well I can’t apply back there because I wasn’t successful. And my advice is, keep applying. And often, if someone’s applied two or three times for a job, we go, “Wow! They really want to work here.”

Pharmacy Intern – Zoe: Knowing that when you’re working in Queensland Health, it’s not that everyone’s going down the same path. That you’ve got so many different options and avenues that you can go down, that you don’t have to do the same thing that everyone else is doing to be a great pharmacist in that profession.

Pharmacy Intern – Sara: I think, uni teaches you so much. But once you’re out there actually practising, you learn so much more. And I’m really excited to see, I guess, the scope of what I can learn.

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Pharmacy Assistant - Ellie:  My name is Ellie Liesch and I'm a pharmacy assistant at the Toowoomba Hospital Pharmacy. I love being able to help my patients and helping my pharmacist out with their clinical ward work that we do at the hospital here. There's a lot more to being a pharmacy assistant and working at a hospital than I originally thought. A lot of people think pharmacy is just sticking labels on a box, but there's a lot more clinical and educational avenues that you need to go through. What attracted me to hospital pharmacy was the learning opportunities, being able to advance in my certificates three, four, five and so on, and being able to learn a lot more knowledge than how to sell over the counter products. To be able to say I made a difference to my patients that I see on the ward, and my pharmacists that I work with daily, just being able to help them out with their day-to-day tasks and things like that, that make their jobs and their life easier. Definitely hospital is the way to go. It's amazing. Community pharmacy has its own challenges, same as hospital, but hospital pharmacy I find is a lot more rewarding. There's a lot more to learn and it's just a wonderful place to be. If I hadn't built up the courage to be able to go out and do pharmacy, I wouldn't be where I am at the moment.

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Townsville Pharmacy Director – Kelvin: To be a staff member of Queensland Health comes with a sense of pride, I find, because the community know who you are and what you do.

STARS Metro North Pharmacy Director – Margie: When I’m looking to employ a new staff member in our ‘pharmily’ – that’s what I tend to call them – the most important thing that I look for is that essentially, they’re a good person. Someone who really cares about patients. That they have a curiosity for learning. So much of being a pharmacist in Queensland Health is about lifelong learning.

Townsville Pharmacy Director – Kelvin: You can really tell staff members that actually genuinely want to be there and care for patients. Similarly, I look for that when I'm trying to recruit. And I think the questions we ask in our recruitments are really important. And as directors, too, we can tell by the staff answers which ones are ultimately going to be there and be there for the sustainability of the department as well.

Acting Director of Allied Health – Andrew: Applicants can expect a structured level of support within – especially their formative years – as they are learning a set of skills as a pharmacist.

South West Pharmacy Director – Mitchell: There’s always someone… within the broader sort of pharmacy… or Queensland Health community, that can help you out with your questions. There's more people to go to.

Acting Director of Allied Health – Andrew: From there, you can start to guide your journey into the area of your interest, working all the way through to advanced and consultant pharmacy or going different pathways, whether that be in clinical education and support, and management.

North West Pharmacy Director – Toby: So yes, there is clinical management of patients, which is great. There’s also looking at the operational side of things if you’re working in systems and improving how efficient things tick over.

STARS Metro North Pharmacy Director – Margie: A newly onboarded staff member can expect to love their job.

Acting Director of Allied Health – Andrew: Someone that’s adaptable, resilient, able to work as a team and really contribute to positive culture and getting the best outcomes for the patient is really what we looking for.

Video transcript

Senior Pharmacist – Melanie: Hi, my name’s Melanie. I’m a Senior Pharmacist.

Advanced Training Resident Pharmacist – Kate: Hello, I’m Kate. I’ve recently completed my advanced training residency in cardiology.

Pharmacy Clinical Educator – Karl:  And I’m Karl. I’m a Pharmacy Clinical Educator.

Pharmacy Team Leader – Courtney: And I’m Courtney. I’m a Pharmacy Team Leader in general medicine. So, how I got to where I am today is I actually did an undergraduate pharmacy degree. And then I actually did an internship with Queensland Health. Just at a hospital right next door to uni. And then I was lucky enough to stay on at that same site, and I’ve worked at a big tertiary hospital – the same big tertiary hospital – my whole career actually. I’ve done my foundation training. So got to experience, you know, time working in outpatients, time working in general medicine and surgery, and got to find that I have a love of general medicine. And I’m now working in a senior management role, both with a clinical component but actually managing a team of about ten pharmacists as well.

Senior Pharmacist – Melanie: That’s great. I had a similar journey. So, studied my Bachelor of Pharmacy. Then moved into intern at a Queensland Health site. And due to my partner having a military profession, we have moved around. So, I’ve gathered experience across multiple sites within Queensland Health, gathering experience as I go. I’ve also worked interstate, and then brought that experience back to the region that I work in now for Queensland Health, and I’m in a Senior Pharmacist role across a couple of different teams. I work for a chronic conditions service as well as a better cardiac care service.

Advanced Training Resident Pharmacist – Kate: Oh, that’s great. That’s similar to myself in that I’ve also moved around. Did my intern year in a Queensland Health facility. I worked as a pharmacist for a few years, and then actually tried a different profession. So, I went back and did some postgraduate study in teaching, and then worked over in Washington, DC for a few years as a teacher. Came back, did a little bit of work as an educator, and then found myself in a team leader position whilst doing my advanced training residency, and Masters. So, a slightly different path, I guess, to yourself, Courtney, but ending up in a similar position.

Pharmacy Team Leader – Courtney:  But came back to pharmacy.

Advanced Training Resident Pharmacist – Kate: Came back to pharmacy. Yes.

Pharmacy Team Leader – Courtney: Love of the profession.

Pharmacy Clinical Educator – Karl: Yeah, I also did a little bit of time in the UK. So, I did my internship in the community pharmacy in Brisbane. Then, went straightaway to the UK and worked there for six years in a variety of different hospitals and some different roles. And then came back to Brisbane and worked in a clinical role, and cardiology, and care of the elderly and then sort of moved into clinical education. And I’ve been in clinical education for about 10 years now.

Advanced Training Resident Pharmacist – Kate: I think that’s a real plus of the profession in the variety and the ability to move around to different roles and have different experiences. It’s a real benefit of working for Queensland Health.

Senior Pharmacist – Melanie: Particularly with the structure within Queensland Health. There’s so much opportunity to learn from more senior pharmacists. I know I’ve been able to learn from Karl within my development pathway within Queensland Health. And it’s certainly a plus.

Pharmacy Team Leader – Courtney: Yeah, myself too. I was mentored by Karl throughout my whole journey and now I get to work collaboratively with him.

Pharmacy Clinical Educator – Karl: And as a clinical educator, we also learn loads. So, most of the time spent with our pharmacists on the wards I’m learning just as much, in fact more, than what they’re learning from me. So I think, Queensland Health is a very collaborative place to work in. It’s very supportive for managers as well as kind of junior pharmacists.

Pharmacy Team Leader – Courtney: Yeah. Definitely full of opportunity. So, like myself, I’m actually undertaking a PhD at the moment. So, working both as a clinician developing as a researcher. So, I’ve been really lucky to be mentored by yourself, Karl and by some other experienced research pharmacists at my workplace. And then also been lucky enough to receive some grants through Queensland Health to help fund my research and to help fund some backfill so that we can still provide appropriate care to our patients, but I can also upskill. And I’ve been lucky enough to do some extra training in education and research as well, like a statistics course.

Pharmacy Clinical Educator – Karl: It’s really interesting, isn’t it? Because I think when you’re a junior pharmacist the word research is used, and you think I don’t want anything to do with that. But you know, as you progress, you slowly start thinking yeah, this is a really unanswered question, or there is some improvement that needs to happen here. So, I think naturally you get more interested in research as you work longer and longer in pharmacy. And there’s definitely lots of research opportunities in Queensland Health. Lots of supportive networks within Queensland Health full stop. But they’ve also got good collaborations with the universities to help researchers like yourself, Courtney.

Pharmacy Team Leader – Courtney: Yeah. And I think without knowing it, I think I was building research skills without even thinking I was. For example, we do quality use of medicine placements with students from the universities. So, through doing that I was learning how to build a research question, how to build a protocol to try and answer that research question.

Advanced Training Resident Pharmacist – Kate: And I think something that’s really exciting also, with hospital pharmacy in Queensland Health, is we now have formalised training programs. So, after you do your intern year, we have the Residency program at some sites, and then also at other sites, they offer the advanced training Residency programs. And within both of those programs you do have to complete a formal research project. So, it is sort of a skill where you can use the connections within your workplace, but also other workplaces around the state as well.

Senior Pharmacist – Melanie: I think Karl touched on a good point about maybe not necessarily being interested in research at first, but as you maybe sub-specialise into a particular area. So, in my instance, I work specifically in the heart failure service. As you become more familiar with practice in that area, you start to question. Well, how well are we doing in this particular area and like we discussed earlier, Kate, you start to look into how well you’re doing at prescribing particular medications and how you can improve. So yeah, I certainly agree with that comment there.

Pharmacy Team Leader – Courtney: And also working in hospital pharmacy really gives you the opportunity to collaborate. You probably would be working with lots of doctors and other allied health that are also interested in the same sort of research or clinical problems that you have and want to know how you’re doing.

Advanced Training Resident Pharmacist – Kate: Actually, that’s a real strength Courtney is the multidisciplinary connection that comes from working in a Queensland Health facility. So, when we were discussing different projects, we’ve been involved in, I’ve really thrived on working with medical, all different levels, nursing, allied health and also pharmacists of all different levels. So, I really enjoyed the mentorship of working with a more junior pharmacist within a research project to optimise patient care. And I think, you know, the hospital setting really does allow those opportunities for collaboration and teamwork.

Senior Pharmacist – Melanie: Yeah.

Pharmacy Clinical Educator – Karl: I must say, I really enjoy working with the nursing staff. So, there’s some specialist nurses and some clinical areas that I kind of work a bit more closely with. And you know their roles often overlap quite a lot with pharmacy. And so, education for them from us, but also education for us from them. And the nice thing about hospital pharmacy is, you know, you’ve got all of these people working towards the same goal, and there’s just so many allies. There’s always hurdles and when you’ve got to get across those hurdles there’s people who will support you and lift you up and carry you, and vice versa. When there’s other people trying to make some initiatives work and you can contribute, it’s fantastic to be able to know that you can contribute a little bit in your two cents worth.

Pharmacy Team Leader – Courtney: Yeah. And in hospital pharmacy you have all of these amazing allied health, nurses, doctors at your fingertips. So, you know if you need to talk to an occupational therapist about a patient’s cognition and ability to manage medications, they’re there. You can have that discussion. You can problem solve that, then and there, for the patient.

Advanced Training Resident Pharmacist – Kate: And it is probably important to highlight as well that whilst all of us have trained and worked in a hospital setting that prior hospital experience shouldn’t be seen as a barrier to coming into the hospital setting. I think it’s you know…I always think that the most important thing when you hire somebody is an attitude. Somebody has the right attitude for the job, and all of these skills that we’re discussing can be learned, can be developed on the job, and there is that support to grow. So, I think it really shouldn’t be seen as a barrier, if you don’t have hospital experience to not apply for that position, I think.

Pharmacy Clinical Educator – Karl: Yeah. And our training programs in hospital, we have different training programs if you come from a community training position or hospital internships. So, we train people in different ways. You know, if you come from community, we’re mindful that you might not be up to date with all the clinical trials and guidelines and hospital guidelines. So, you’d end up working somewhere like the dispensary until you feel comfortable, then go onto a ward. So, the only real limitation of working in Queensland Health is your own mindset. I think, really.

Pharmacy Team Leader – Courtney: For sure. We have so many people that from come from different backgrounds at my workplace. Lots of people have come from different career pathways. For example, pharmacists working in community, we’ve got people that have done something different like education like yourself, Kate. We’ve got people that have come from doing a nursing background and moved into pharmacy.

Advanced Training Resident Pharmacist – Kate: And I think even within Queensland Health, we have so many people within the department who might be full-time, but they have sort of two different roles like yourself, Mel, where it allows them…They might have a community-based role where they help patients transition back into the community. And we know Karl, he mentioned before that transitions of care are real opportunities, unfortunately, for medications to go wrong. So, we have pharmacists who work in the community setting. We have pharmacists who specifically help to manage cardiology patients and their medication. So, I think Queensland Health allows you, often we have so many staff who can do multiple roles in multiple settings and it sort of allows you to work across transitions which I think is also such a different experience to managing an inpatient on the room.

Senior Pharmacist – Melanie: It absolutely demonstrates the breadth of opportunity within Queensland Health. I know when I first transitioned from inpatient pharmacy work to community based for outpatients setting, I felt like I missed the pace, and I missed the urgency. But then you just start to see things from a different angle and really get to integrate and collaborate with the community care providers and, like you mentioned, it just opens up that can of worms for medication misadventure at that transitions-of-care point. And now I’m quite passionate about that transition of care. So, I really enjoy the roles that I’m in. Just trying to optimise that handover of care, preventing admissions, and getting chronic conditions stabilised and managed in the community.

Pharmacy Team Leader – Courtney: It’s really interesting that you mention the many and varied roles that a pharmacist can have in hospital pharmacy. You, yourself, as a great example of one, at the moment – working in the operating theatres, which is quite different to what you would picture a pharmacist doing. We also have pharmacists that work in digital health and IT. So, they have this clinical background, but they’re actually designing our computer systems that we use for prescribing. Or we have pharmacists that work in quality use of medicines and evaluating the costs of medications at the hospital. So, it’s not just your stock standard pharmacist dealing with the patient or pharmacist on a ward. There are so many other things that you can do.

Pharmacy Clinical Educator – Karl: And you know you don’t start in that role and stay in it forever. You rotate around quite a lot at the start until you find something you want, and then can apply for a permanent role. So, that sort of training into multiple different areas gives you this breadth of experience that allows you to say, well actually, “I think I really want to work in general medicine, become an expert there.” So, I think you know, other jobs, you pick your job, and that’s it, you’re doing that for life. Working for Queensland Health, one of the really helpful things is you can rotate until you figure out what you like.

Advanced Training Resident Pharmacist – Kate: Looking forward to the profession of pharmacy and where to for the future I think the thing that really excites me is having pharmacists in new positions. So, for example, myself, working in operating theatres. Having pharmacists working particularly in aged care. You know, having pharmacists expanding their scope of practice. So, we’re seeing vaccination in a community setting, in hospital setting. But we’ve also seen partnered prescribing. So having a pharmacist and a doctor collaboratively charting medications on admission to try and minimise medication errors from the point of admission. So, I think the extending roles and diversity of pharmacists is really exciting. And I think something that I get really excited about is, I think, as a pharmacist I know every day the impact that I make, and I know why I do what I do. And I think that it’s really exciting for the profession to be able to have pharmacists who also feel that, and to have really good job satisfaction. So, I’m really excited about the opportunities that are to come.

Pharmacy Team Leader – Courtney: So, it’s really nice to see how the workforce as well as pharmacy is really embracing technology as well. For example, at my workplace we’ve gone from, you know, paper medication charts to digital computer systems where our medications and our lab tests and observations are.

Senior Pharmacist – Melanie: On that point, Courtney, I work in a role where we provide outreach services to our rural sites. And we certainly do utilise our digital options, providing telehealth and telephone care, just trying to provide our cardiology care closer to home to improve patient outcomes. So yeah, I certainly can echo those benefits of digital.

Pharmacy Team Leader – Courtney: Yeah, really making health care more accessible to people through things like telehealth.

Advanced Training Resident Pharmacist – Kate: I think, also trying to improve the communication from hospital to community settings. So, when you talk about digital health, having medication lists that are now readily available to community services, I think those are really exciting. There’s more people who are able to find the information that they need, that are related to medications.

Pharmacy Clinical Educator – Karl: And I think, you know, one of the things about being in the more connected world where information is available, is the risk of information overload and you do need medication experts to manage all that information. So, it’s one thing to have all the information. It’s another thing to say “Well, what should I do with this?” Because the reality is, you’ve got to figure out, you know, which patients you need to see, what recommendations you need to make. And I think, having pharmacists as the medication experts who’ve got a solid backbone of training around clinical information around medications is really important. And I think one of the really useful things is, whatever your role is going to be in the future – whether you’re working in the community, working in GP practice, you know, residential aged care facility, hospital pharmacy provides a really good background of clinical information. Because you’ve got so many high-level senior pharmacists to work with, but also high-level doctors, nurses, allied health. So, the baseline training that you get after many years of hospital pharmacy is really essential for going onto diversify into roles of the future, I think.

Advanced Training Resident Pharmacist – Kate: And I think what needs to stay consistent, though, is that when we review a patient, we really look at them through the medication lens. We try and look at them holistically. But compared to the GP who have many other aspects to manage, I think it’s really important, and Karl mentioned this before, that we remain medication experts. And that is our focus. And we really need to keep up our training so that we have that skill set to be able to focus on such an important area.

Pharmacy Clinical Educator – Karl: Especially given, you know, the number of medications that are available now.

Advanced Training Resident Pharmacist – Kate: Aging population.

Pharmacy Clinical Educator – Karl: Aging population. And, you know, there’s more and more medicines coming on the market every day. I mean, I haven’t got the exact numbers, but it was scary the amount of the medicines. And the medicines coming out now are all really specialised medicines. So, biologics or monoclonal antibodies and they’re very expensive as well. So we’ve also got this really important role in helping to rationalise the use of these expensive medicines.

Advanced Training Resident Pharmacist – Kate: Yeah, that’s a good point. I think, you know, healthcare is just so much more complex, isn’t it? It’s continuing the patient comorbidities, as patients live longer, they’re becoming more complex, the management and the monitoring and medications of how you treat those conditions are all becoming more complex. And you know Queensland Health really does allow you to see that complexity every day, in every patient. So, it’s challenging to have to manage.

Pharmacy Team Leader – Courtney: But they really support you through it, right? All the education and training opportunities, the ability, you know, to keep up your CPD points.

Pharmacy Clinical Educator – Karl: I mean, in the five, ten, fifteen years ago, a patient on a lot of medicines was someone with five medicines. We used to say, if you’re on five medicines, you’re on too many. Now…

Pharmacy Team Leader – Courtney: Most of my patients are on twenty on a general medicine ward.

Senior Pharmacist – Melanie: Within my role within the heart failure service, I am networked. Like you mentioned previously Karl, there are such good networks within Queensland Health and the heart failure service is one that is quite advanced with its networking. So, we have a statewide working group, pharmacist specialised in heart failure. We use that platform to collaborate, discuss workforces, other services that we provide and even standardise our data collection recording for better research. So, first moving into that rotational area, it was a great support to know that that network was there to support me.

Pharmacy Team Leader – Courtney: Yeah, so speaking of supportive networks – I remember reflecting back to my intern year – we had organised education events, where it wasn’t just, you know, the interns at my site where I was working, but it was also other interns working at other Queensland Health sites. So, it was a really great opportunity to network, you know, learn from each other. But I, even now, I refer back to those people who I, you know, had that training with. Now one of them is a pain specialist, and so I’ve got a ‘go-to’ contact if I’ve got any questions about pain.

Pharmacy Clinical Educator – Karl: Yeah. And in our training programs like the advanced training residency that you’re doing Kate, but also the foundational residency, which is sort of a simpler version for more junior staff, these kind of training programs, you know, intentionally kind of build mentors in from within the profession and external to the profession people. I think you’ve got a consulting cardiologist as your mentor. Mentors in that will sort of guide you through that program. But more importantly, guide you through, you know, the following years in life and research that you might want to do, training. So, I think most of our training programs intentionally sort of seek out mentors from, you know, other areas in other fields and other hospitals. So, there’s some, quite a lot of support there, and I think there’s even sort of a magical list of experts in areas. If you’re working in rural area, and you need to phone an IB pharmacist, there’s a magical list where all these people put their numbers down, and I know our specialist pharmacists take a lot of phone calls from people, about clinical issues from regional and remote areas.

Pharmacy Team Leader – Courtney: Yeah. I’ve definitely seen that happen Karl. And they’re always more than happy to help and provide, you know, extra education and training, or support with the clinical decisions.

Pharmacy Clinical Educator – Karl: I mean working with Queensland Health it’s just such a collaborative environment. I think, everyone wants to help everyone. There’s why we get into health in the first place. But people want to help their colleagues as well as patients, I think.

Advanced Training Resident Pharmacist – Kate: And I think it’s also talking about connectiveness, I think there’s also an element of pride in terms of the other pharmacists that we work with amongst Queensland Health. Like I never met Mel until today, but I knew Mel’s name, and the work that she’d done. You know, we’ve got a national conference that’s happening next weekend. And you can sort of look through the program, and whilst you haven’t met all of these people, you know who they are, you know the work they do, and you know that they would be a go to if you were in a difficult situation. So, I think, you know, it is clear it’s a division that celebrates success and allows the opportunity to reach out and connect.