Pharmacy

Graduate and experienced opportunities exist in Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services, hospitals and community pharmacies across the CRRH region.

CPD sessions and seminars  are available via video conference and on site in Mount Isa.

Pharmacy Intern Program

The Centre for Rural and Remote Health’s [CRRH] Pharmacy Intern Program [ITP] based in North West Queensland aims to prepare intern pharmacists with specialised training and skills – to enhance career prospects in the rural and remote workforce.

The program provides interns with a multi-disciplinary approach that supplements the mandatory prescribed training program that all pharmacy interns undertake. 

Pharmacy Intern Sessions

• Intern pharmacists meet fortnightly with the Pharmacist Academic and a member from an allied health setting for an interactive, participatory teaching and learning opportunity.
• Allied health practitioners discuss their discipline with interns and how their field relates to pharmacy practice.
• Interns share pharmacy-specific information with the allied health practitioners tailored to their discipline.

These sessions are designed to promote open discussion and practical information sharing with the aim to better prepare pharmacists to work in a rural multidisciplinary team.

An additional benefit of this program is that allied health practitioners are upskilled on medications and the pharmacist role in a multidisciplinary team.

Results

Interns who have completed the Intern Program through CRRH possess:

• Recognition of the importance of networking with allied health teams
• Enhanced understanding of the roles, function and capacity of allied health professionals
• Enhanced understanding of importance of multidisciplinary approaches for optimal patient care
• Skills and confidence as a pharmacist to integrate into multidisciplinary teams to improve patient outcomes

All five pharmacists who completed the program have been retained as practicing pharmacists in an area equally as, or more remote than Mount Isa.

The CRRH Intern Program highlights the importance of multidisciplinary teaching and learning models. The Intern Pharmacist year is an ideal time for pharmacists to create networks and enhance their knowledge of multidisciplinary teams. The Intern Program better equips pharmacists to work in outback multidisciplinary healthcare teams as a rural generalist pharmacist.