Benefits of Becoming a Registered Pharmacist in Australia

Becoming a registered pharmacist in Australia not only opens up diverse job opportunities worldwide but also offers a highly respected profession with a strong presence in the community. Pharmacists play a crucial role in preparing medications, advising healthcare practitioners, ensuring proper medication usage, and providing care to patients. This article aims to provide a detailed overview of the numerous benefits of pursuing a career as a registered pharmacist in Australia.

Community Involvement

• Pharmacists in Australia have a significant impact on the community. They contribute to the better functioning of everyday life by ensuring the availability of essential medications. Additionally, pharmacists actively promote health awareness and actively contribute to the development of society. 
• In community pharmacies, pharmacists offer primary healthcare advice, educate customers on health promotion and disease prevention, and provide valuable information about medications and their proper usage.

Career Advancement

• The field of pharmacy in Australia offers a wide range of career opportunities and avenues for advancement. Pharmacists can find employment in various sectors such as hospitals, retail businesses, academia, the pharmaceutical industry, government bodies, and even armed services. 
• This diversity allows pharmacists to choose a career path that aligns with their interests and goals. With further specialization and experience, pharmacists can advance their careers and take on leadership roles or pursue advanced degrees to become experts in specialized areas of pharmacy practice.

Better Salary

• Registered pharmacists in Australia generally enjoy competitive salaries and benefits. The demand for pharmacists is continually increasing due to the pharmaceutical needs of a large and aging population. This high demand for pharmaceutical services ensures favorable job prospects and remuneration for qualified pharmacists.

Career Stability

• The field of pharmacy provides excellent job stability. Pharmacists are essential healthcare professionals who play a crucial role in patient care. With an aging population and advancements in healthcare, the need for pharmaceutical services is ever-present. This ensures that pharmacists have a stable and secure career, with opportunities for growth and development.

Flexibility

• The pharmacy offers flexibility in terms of work environment and schedule. Pharmacists can choose to work in various settings such as community pharmacies, hospitals, industrial research, or even take up locum positions. Locum pharmacists enjoy the flexibility of working in different locations and settings, providing them with a unique opportunity to gain diverse experiences and explore different work environments.

Growth Potential

• Pharmacists have immense growth potential in Australia. They can specialize in various areas such as consultant pharmacy, mental health pharmacy, drug safety, pain management, and more. Specializing in these areas allows pharmacists to develop expertise and contribute to specialized healthcare services. 
• Pharmacists can also pursue opportunities to work in government and non-governmental institutions, where they can provide advisory services and contribute to policy-making and healthcare planning.

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Pharmacy Practice in Australia

• Australia has a unique pharmacy practice with different scheduling of medicines. This includes "pharmacist-only medications," which can be supplied from a pharmacy without a prescription under the supervision of a pharmacist. The emphasis in Australian pharmacies is on preventive therapy, nutritional supplementation, and health promotion, which goes beyond simply filling prescriptions.

Moreover, UK citizens living in Australia are eligible to apply for Medicare, which allows access to subsidized medication costs and general practitioner visits through the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. Pharmacists can also exercise their discretion to further subsidize medication costs for patients, leading to the rise of "discount pharmacies."

Specializations and Opportunities for Pharmacists in Australia

Pharmacy in Australia offers a wide range of specializations and opportunities for pharmacists. Some of the specialized roles include:

1. Community pharmacists: They dispense prescriptions, provide advice on drug selection and usage to doctors and all other health professionals, primary health care advice and support, and educate customers on health promotion, disease prevention, and the proper use of medicines.
2. Consultant pharmacists: They are either employed by the community pharmacy or hospitals or they are self-employed and take up contracts with community pharmacies to provide medication review to the residents of the place or they provide medication-related services to the society.
3. Hospital pharmacists: They are part of a hospital healthcare team and are involved in monitoring medication usage, counseling patients, providing drug information and advice to health professionals and the community, conducting clinical trials and preparing products for patient use.
4. Industrial pharmacists: They are the research team that manufactures, tests, analyzes, and markets pharmaceutical and medical products.
5. Outside the square and going places: some pharmacist also works as a locum and in fields like the military, law, journalism, and academics. They provide services to rural and remote areas and even abroad.
6. Locum pharmacist: if you enjoy flexibility, then you may enjoy being a locum Pharmacist. There are a lot of positions in being a locum pharmacist like maternity leave, vacation, staff turnover or in relief situations if a pharmacist calls in sick, you get opportunities to try out different work environments and practices. These are people who are looking for flexibility in their jobs and an opportunity to travel, you can try for the position of locum pharmacist.
7. Military pharmacist: The department of National Defence employees registered pharmacists to work in the army, navy and Air Force. For a pharmacist, this role can involve being in other health personnel to work in navy ships.
8. Mental health pharmacists: They are responsible for providing clinical pharmacy services to the adult mental health in patient’s wards, and psychiatric assessment. It is a highly specialised career path that requires strong teamwork skills and it focus of this work includes managing the supply of antipsychotic medications to mental health patients.
9. Government and NGO roles: pharmacist have knowledge, skill and experience that can feed into advisory roles, its applicable both for government as well as non-governmental institutions, such as health funds and private hospitals.
10. Women’s and new-born’s pharmacists: Other than old age pharmacist there are other field for new-born’s, providing clinical pharmacy services to maternal and neonatal patients. Most pharmacist come to this career path with a grounding in hospital pharmacy.
11. Pain educator, program director or consultant: Chronic or acute pain are some of the fascinating areas to work in. pharmacist work with pain sufferers manage their medications and coordinate other forms of treatment. This field that encompasses many areas of treatment, not just pharmacy and pain medications.
12. Drug safety officer: as a drug safety officer, they are responsible for pharmacovigilance activities, including receiving and processing of the reports of all adverse drug events and conducting regular conciliations with health authorities.

As we can see, there are several areas in which one can specialize; this is one advantage of becoming a licensed pharmacist. People can select from any department based on their area of interest once they have obtained their pharmacy registration.

Conclusion

Becoming a registered pharmacist in Australia offers numerous benefits, including community involvement, career advancement, better salary prospects, career stability, flexibility, and growth opportunities. The field of pharmacy practice in Australia provides a diverse range of specializations and opportunities for pharmacists to contribute to patient care, research, and public health. By pursuing a career as a pharmacist, individuals can make a meaningful impact on society while enjoying a rewarding and respected profession.

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