Farming Out To Pharmacists: Addressing The Healthcare Skills Shortage In Rural Australia

Rural Healthcare in Australia

A former top Australian healthcare official has proposed new measures to address the shortage of healthcare services in rural areas of the country.

The proposal, which has been backed by the Pharmacy Guild of Australia, seeks to expand on the duties that pharmacists are licensed to perform within the Australian healthcare system, bringing them more in-line with pharmaceutical services available in other countries. In so doing, it’s hoped that they will be able to alleviate the workload being placed on other healthcare workers, especially doctors.

Rural Communities Suffering from Shortage of GPs

The shortage of doctors has created significant difficulties for Australia’s rural communities. People in rural areas are more likely to require health care due to the shortage of GPs, yet are less likely to be able to obtain that care than their city-dwelling counterparts, further exacerbating the situation.

The clamouring for the attention of doctors is putting severe strain on the country’s healthcare services, and leading to increased financial costs for both patients and healthcare workers.

Skill shortages have been an issue for the healthcare industry throughout Australia, but the situation is particularly bad in rural areas. This has been put down to doctors and healthcare workers simply having little desire to operate in such areas.

Additional incentives, such as financial bonuses, have been offered by the government in an attempt to persuade them otherwise, but have not proven as effective as they would have hoped. Healthcare services in rural areas remain well below the level of what’s available in the cities, and it will take around 65 years for them to catch up if new measures are not introduced.

Hence the plan to allot pharmacists some of the duties that would normally be performed by doctors, in the hopes that they will be able to alleviate some of the burden being placed on healthcare workers in these areas.

It’s been suggested that expanding the powers of pharmacists in this way could bring about a significant reduction in doctor’s workloads, allowing them to focus on more pressing health issues. If pharmacists were to assume just 5% of the workload in the poorest served areas, it could free up around 225,000 GP visits.

The Pharmacist – an Untapped Resource

It’s believed that Australia’s pharmacists are being underused, and attempts to address the shortage of healthcare services in rural areas has lent weight to that argument.

Their powers are limited compared to pharmacists in other countries, such as Britain and Canada, where they are authorized to provide services that only doctors can perform in Australia. For example, they are allowed to perform vaccinations and prescribe medications, and there is a greater degree of collaboration between them and doctors when it comes to formulating a healthcare plan for their patients.

It’s hoped that the proposed reforms, together with the introduction of a new kind of healthcare worker – the physicians assistant; will go some way towards procuring the additional manpower that the healthcare industry so desperately needs, if it is to provide Australia’s rural communities with the treatment they deserve.

Furthermore, the fee that pharmacists will be entitled to charge the Commonwealth in exchange for these services will provide them with an additional source of revenue.

Currently the profession of ‘pharmacist’ is included on Australia’s list of skills in demand. Debate may persist over whether or not the country actually has a shortage of pharmacists, but with the healthcare industry in general becoming increasingly reliant on skilled migration to fill the gaps being left by retired healthcare workers, pharmaceutical expertise will be in high demand.

is a freelance writer who knows everything there is to know about pharmaceuticals (actually he just gets all his ‘knowledge’ from Breaking Bad)
The following two tabs change content below.
Administrator and Chief Editor for TLB. Loves to talk. Super freak about publishing. Loves watching obscure movies, good cook and overall gentle fellow. Reach him if you want to write an article for TLB. Email him on marty@thelocalbrand.com