Rural Pharmacy Workforce study
Human Capital Alliance was involved in three previous major studies of the Pharmacy workforce (1999, 2003 and 2009/10) which identified a range of future labour market scenarios based on optimistic and more negative assumptions for supply and demand. The most recent project delivered a Pharmacy Workforce Planning model that allows policy makers to see the effect on the labour market of adjustment of over 30 pharmacy workforce supply and demand variables. The model was the keynote presentation at the Pharmacy Practice Research Summit in Canberra (March 2010) where it received much acclaim including from the President of the Pharmacy Guild.
Under the Fifth Community Pharmacy Agreement Human Capital Alliance has been engaged to undertake the Rural Pharmacy Workforce study. A part of the project will be to review and revise the Pharmacy Workforce Model constructed in 2010 and to improve its capacity to deliver insight into specific segments of the pharmacy labour market ― in this case the ‘rural’ and ‘remote’ pharmacist labour markets. The objectives for this project are essentially:
• To collect quantitative data on the rural and remote pharmacy workforce and services to assess where (locations), and to what degree, any workforce deficit may exist;
• To collect qualitative data, where gaps are found to exist on how the ‘gaps’ manifest in terms of the types of pharmacy services provided (or not provided), and the consequent health service and health outcome impacts perceived by pharmacists and other health professionals, and by the community;
• To update the Pharmacy Workforce Model to reflect changes in current practice; and
• To update the Pharmacy Workforce Model so that it can model more precisely the likely outcome of a range of scenarios that might impact specifically on the rural and remote pharmacy labour market segments.
One of the best aspects of this project is that it facilitates HCA’s great pharmacy team being largely reassembled. This includes Lloyd Sansom, nationally treasured within the pharmacy profession, Tim Chen, world renowned researcher into professional pharmacy services, Peter Gissing, a longstanding rural pharmacist associate, Mike Long, an economist formally with CEET and Andy Gilbert, a fearless nationally and internationally acknowledged researcher into professional pharmacy practice. Added to the team this time are some very knowledgeable rural and remote practising pharmacists, Andrew ‘Robbo’ Roberts, Patrick Mahony and Lia Mahony.
This project will run in duration for 3.3 years from August 2011 to November 2014 and will be overseen by an Advisory Panel set up by the Pharmacy Guild of Australia
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