MAY,Edition # 25, 2001

A couple of months ago I used this forum to put forward a case for helping experienced pharmacists to stay up to date and catch up with newer graduates.

But what sorts of skills will pharmacists need to keep up to date in the future?

Pharmacists all know how to use a computer for dispensing, government policies gave them no choice in the matter.
And how many pharmacists can say that their computing abilities stretch beyond turning the computer on, dispensing and doing a backup?
The Goods and Services Tax (GST), certainly forced most operators to upgrade to new computerised accounting programs, if they weren't doing so already.
This is the first major area where training will be necessary.
Not all pharmacies have the luxury of being able to hire an accounts clerk to process invoices and payments, plus do the Business Activity Statement (BAS) every month (or every quarter if you opted that way).
In some pharmacies, this will mean knowing how to do two things on the same computer.
For those of you who are into the Internet (as most reading this article would be), this might be simple. However, it is these simple things that are often overlooked when people learn about using computers.
Comprehensive computer training is one area that Continuing Pharmacy Education (CPE) providers may be forced to look at for future needs, as the bean counters tighten their grip on our everyday lives.
Going hand-in-hand with computer training these days is Internet training.
More and more information is being made available on the Internet and much of it difficult to obtain elsewhere.
You can view Pharmaceutic Benefits (PBS) listings online now, so if you're unsure if someone is eligible for an authority, look it up without moving to find the book. It might not mean so much in community pharmacy, but in a hospital pharmacy, if someone on the other end of the phone needs to know now, and the PBS book is in the next room, it can be very handy.
Most government news, reviews and policies are available online, far more readily than in printed form. Very soon wholesalers will give you the opportunity to do your ordering online, in a highly sophisticated manner.
Many pharmacies now do their banking online, and the Federal Government's unwillingness to confront the major banks seems set to encourage the growth of this area (but you still need some way to deposit your takings and getting change...).
Training pharmacists, and particularly managers, in the ways of the Internet, will open up a world of new educational opportunities.
Internet based Continuing Pharmacy Education (CPE) is now a big industry in the US and will surely follow here.
At my workplace (in a public hospital) we now use the Internet both as a learning tool and an educational tool. This might sound redundant, but we are putting the Internet, or at least our Intranet (a sort of mini internet viewable only within our hospital system) to work for us.
All the commonly asked questions that become repetitive and annoying are listed so that we have both a point of reference for staff and a readily printable document for distribution.
This method of information distribution is really what the Internet was originally designed for, and is still its most practical use. A knowledge of how to share information via the Internet could become an important skill for pharmacists with a drug information role, or even those who just want a way to communicate with their local community via an Internet site.
Old documents can be archived and all could be viewed 24 hours a day, seven days a week from anywhere in the world.
There are plenty of software packages that will give you an easy introduction to designing for the Internet.
At work we use Microsoft FrontPage because it comes standard with our computers. It is one of the simplest to use for the Internet newcomer, and integrates with the rest of the Microsoft Office Suite.
A program called Dreamweaver is used to construct the ComputaChem Newsletter pages and it offers advantages in its ease of use and powerful editing facilities.
When the editor originally began publishing the newsletter, he was somewhat of an Internet newcomer himself. You'd be surprised how easy it can be.
If you can use a word processor you can design a webpage.
You might not design your e-commerce site or offer a free email account to your customers, but you will have a start, before you dive right in and talk to the professionals.
Computer skills are just the beginning.
In future editions we'll explore some more areas of potential interest.
Ends

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