Australian Consultant Pharmacist

A publication for community and hospital pharmacists.
It is designed to stimulate debate, and to provide ideas, comments and direction, for the developing concept of consultant pharmacy and its impact on the health system in Australia.

"Extending Health Systems into the Community"

This publication was originally designed to be a hard-copy, journal format publication in 1997.
When we took the concept to potential advertisers, they asked, "What are consultant pharmacists?".
Obviously, the controlling body, the Australian Association of Consultant Pharmacists (AACP) had not been talking to the industry at large.

We then paid a visit to the AACP and spoke to the director at that time, and discovered that the organisation appeared to be heavily controlled by its two shareholders, The Pharmacy Guild of Australia and The Pharmaceutical Society of Australia.
We were invited to make a submission to the board, which subsequently occurred. Eventually we were advised that resources did not exist to consider any joint venture or association.
A change in AACP management saw some new developmental activity occur.
We were invited to resubmit our proposal, but it still did not seem to find favour.

Consultant pharmacy is seen by Computachem Services as being the single biggest development to occur in the pharmacy profession for decades and has some exciting possibilities. It represents the first official opportunity for pharmacists to earn a professional fee, not directly linked to the dispensing of a prescription.
It also allows for pharmacists to establish independent practices that do not involve an inventory-based, direct dispensing activity, and to develop specialties such as clinical nutrition support, or disease state management.

British and American pharmacists are well advanced in this process, with British pharmacists at a stage where they can legally prescribe.
This type of activity has been parallelled in the nursing profession here in Australia (and overseas), through nurse practitioners, who can now diagnose, prescribe and dispense under certain conditions. They do seem to be in advance of Australian pharmacists in this development.

The AACP, through Guild and Society stewardship, has to this date, created a solid foundation for consultant pharmacy in Australia.
There is now a need for individual consultant practitioners to be able to elect their own representatives, control their own destiny, and allow some creative input from member practitioners.
We hope this comes soon, and that the AACP Pty Ltd creates a shareholding for each of its members.

Meanwhile, we are reporting on consultant pharmacy through the e-newsletter and maintaining a separate publication, Australian Consultant Pharmacist, on site, represented by one specific article per month.
The artwork on the site was the original design for the hard copy.

As creativity and forward movement occurs in consultant pharmacy, we hope that this particular publication will develop into an essential reference and information journal that will provide leadership and direction.

For the moment, it remains very modest and can be viewed here.

Click here for Australian Consultant Pharmacist Publication
Click here to visit Computachem E-Newsletter archive 2001
Click here to visit Computachem E-Newsletter archive 2000
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