The Pharmacy Guild of Australia
2009 Pharmacy Women's Congress
"Gaining knowledge, sharing experiences, building futures"
Official Opening and Keynote address
14th August, 2009
National President, The Pharmacy Guild of Australia (PGA), Mr Kos Sclavos,
Executive Director, PGA, Ms Wendy Phillips,
Director, Queensland Branch of the Guild and Chairman of the 2009 Conference, Ms Robyn Ede,
Chairman, Women and Young Pharmacists' Committee, (WYPC) Ms Judy Liauw,
National Councillors,
Distinguished Speakers and conference presenters,
Generous Sponsors and valued trade exhibitors,
Delegates and guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,
In the spirit of reconciliation that we wish to see respected and promoted throughout Queensland and Australia, I acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we are gathered, the Yugembeh peoples and their descendants.
Thank you for the invitation to open this, the 6th National Pharmacy Women's Congress. It is a great pleasure to be here and - as Queensland's Governor - to join Senator Jan McLucas in welcoming you to Queensland. We are always proud to have the opportunity to showcase our State's achievements and attractions and especially pleased that the Pharmacy Guild chose to hold the 2009 women's conference here, in a year which has great significance for our State, as we celebrate our Sesqui-centenary.
In these special circumstances, I extend an extra special welcome to our interstate delegates and international visitors; we trust you will find the warmth of our welcome and hospitality matches the warmth of the weather that passes for winter on our beautiful Gold Coast. I hope that having traveled such distances to be here - from Tasmania, WA, the NT, from Alice Springs in the centre of Australia and from the northernmost tip of the State and continent, in the Torres Strait - you will take some ‘time out' to relax and enjoy this location.
I know you are all conscientious professionals, keen to advance your careers and committed to the advancement of the pharmacy industry and of women within pharmacy, but one of the greatest challenges - in fact, problems, for today's working women - is the difficulty they have in finding the right work-life balance. Frankly, it has always been a problem. It certainly was - and remains so - for me. But it is acquiring new dimensions in contemporary Australia. At another national conference at which I spoke recently - on Women in Local Government - a survey of women local government councillors identified work overload as the most critical issue for 86% of those surveyed. In my experience, its a fact of life for most women - but its important, now that many of the great battles for equality of opportunity for women have been won, that it should not be accepted as a ‘way of life' - and for this reason, I was very happy to see some components in your conference program that address this issue of establishing a better balance between your personal and professional lives.
I noted also a call for more interaction between young pharmacists and older mentors.
May I suggest that, amidst all the practical advice that mentors may be able to share, for example, about buying a pharmacy, managing a small business, addressing concerns about security for women pharmacists, this issue not be overlooked. The goals of the Guild and the WYPC are admirable: to see community pharmacy continually refreshed and revitalised - and to involve more women in this process - but if those women are not themselves refreshed and revitalised, these goals could be compromised. I should add that although I believe this to be an issue of particular significance and concern for women, that needs to be addressed squarely and not as a tangential add-on in your informal discussions, it is NOT a problem unique to women: it is, in fact, a national issue. Over the past 30 years, Australia has become one of the top two or three in the ranks of the world's most intensively work-focused high income countries: that is to say we have the dubious distinction of working longer hours than almost anybody else ... and an increasing number of reports are highlighting strong linkages between these long working hours, relationship strains, dysfunctional families and a host of related health and social issues.
As pharmacists, working as part of the healthcare chain - and with our pharmacies in many respects on the frontline of dealing with the community's health and wellbeing - as the first port of call for many members of the community where everyday health needs are concerned - you may be more aware of these stresses and strains than many others. I may be wrong, but I suspect they are observable in the patterns of visits, requests and purchases - and more so in rural and regional locations, where the local pharmacy is such a significant community fixture - more intimately connected than its urban counterparts, with the lives of the people it serves.
In these circumstances, the issues of trust, of confidence, of integrity and ethics -which rightly preoccupy you all - as professionals committed to setting and maintaining the highest standards of customer and community service - come even more to the fore. I was pleased to see in your program also, some speakers and panel sessions focusing on these issues, from a number of different angles - the Lehman sisters session, the Whittlesea experience during the Victorian bushfires and the experience of pharmacists in indigenous communities and remote locations like Thursday Island. They all seem to me to be highly relevant and fertile areas for ‘sharing experiences and gaining knowledge', two of the three goals set out in this year's conference theme. The third one, of course, is ‘building futures'. Here, I know, there is a strong concern to see more women owning and managing pharmacies and assuming leadership positions within the industry. It is an obvious area for concentrated attention and effort at this time, given the marked disparity between the high number of women pharmacy graduates and the relatively low number of women pharmacy leaders. And it will continue to demand attention for the whole industry as the number of women entering the profession continues to grow.
You will all be aware, I am sure, of the latest research, published on this month's Pharmacy website, that predicts a doubling of the number of women pharmacists in Australia over the next twenty years, continuing a trend that has been evident for some time. If this growth is sustained, it is projected that two thirds of the pharmacy sector will be female by 2025. At the same time, the pharmacy sector overall is expected to experience the fastest growth in percentage terms of all the major health sub-sectors between now and 2038. These are dramatic figures - and they suggest to me a number of things: firstly, that the number of women pharmacists moving into leadership positions will inevitably, inexorably grow and accelerate as the gender balance of the profession shifts. Secondly, as this statistical feminisation process of the pharmacy industry continues, it will create real opportunities for a parallel feminisation of work practices and approaches, something that has implications beyond your sector. From a practical viewpoint - and helping to address those issues of work-life balance to which I referred earlier - women in the pharmacy industry will be in a unique position and should be able to lead efforts to introduce more flexible working conditions, increases in job-sharing, including as co-owners and co-managers (like partners in a legal or medical practice) and more collaborative approaches. They will have more bargaining power, more influence and more ability to develop and implement different work and service models - built around the different work styles and approaches that many studies reveal that women bring to the workplace - and importantly, demonstrate as managers. So you have a very exciting prospect before you - and I would suggest, a larger responsibility than simply creating better careers for young women pharmacists in the future.
Thinking about where pharmacy will ‘sit' on the health care spectrum, looming as the largest health sub-sector in the future, it positions you uniquely to influence and shape public policy and practice - to be part of the forces and influences both responding to - and helping to drive changes in the way health care is managed and delivered to our communities.
I know the profession as a whole is thinking about this - as evidenced in the President's address last month to the National Press Club - where, among other things, he signaled the readiness of the profession to be involved more in the promotion of primary health care. There is, of course, a very robust debate with the medical profession on how this might be done. I note for example there is a proposal that pharmacists be able to handle minor ailments and to provide prescriptions for such conditions. Now, I am not in a position as Governor to take sides on these complex questions, but I am convinced that the debate needs to be held and creative solutions developed and agreed to - and I believe that as women pharmacists - or rather as pharmacists who happen to be women - your perspective on these issues is valuable and could/will assist with the formulation of these creative solutions.
There is a huge body of literature on this subject, but as a woman who has worked in my life in a male-dominated working environment, I do believe that women approach things differently, and that these different approaches and ways of responding can add value - whether it be in addressing security concerns in the United Nations Security Council, negotiating international treaties or working at the grassroots level in the heart of communities. And thinking about this, in relation to pharmacy, I find myself in ready agreement with the Dean of the Toledo College of Pharmacy in the US - Dr John Early - who, only last month, observed that "pharmacy is a career built for women", linked to his observation that "women are likely to be more engaging and show more caring of patients than we men are".
As in Australia, the trend for women studying pharmacy in the US has exploded in recent years: half of all pharmacists in the US are women, and Forbes magazine has listed being a pharmacist one of the top ten careers for women and pharmacy as the number one top-paying job for women in the US. Even more interesting, some surveys are showing that women are drawn to pharmacy BECAUSE of the opportunity to be at the front line and to engage with people.
One young woman American student cited in the Forbes magazine commented: "I really enjoyed chemistry. I had two years of chemistry in high school, but I didn't want to be stuck in a lab all day.... I wanted actually to help people and have human interaction, so I chose pharmacy."
Now I don't know what led all of you to study pharmacy - the reasons are probably as diverse as your personalities and individual circumstances, but I am convinced that pharmacy today offers exceptional opportunities for young people wanting to contribute, to be involved with their communities and to make a difference in people's lives. The role of the pharmacist is changing, along with the needs of the community - associated with changes in life style, shifting demographics, our ageing population and changes in the nature of our health problems (an increase in the incidence of chronic and non-communicable diseases and so-called "lifestyle diseases").
As we strive to expand our primary and preventative health care systems to respond to these changes and relieve the pressure on an already over-stretched medical system and to free up the scarcer resources of specialised medicine, pharmacies will be on the frontier of change - and, I suspect, in the thick of the policy debates.
One such debate will be - is already - about cost. Such is the pervasive nature of the rising cost of medical care, it is clear that we will need to find less costly ways of medicating ourselves. That will have to include smarter ways of sustaining our health and a greater focus on preventative health care, which will bring more people through the doorways of your pharmacies and place more responsibility and pressures on pharmacists to get it right.
This, in turn, will require more knowledge of legal issues and more focus on the status of pharmacists under law. I appreciate and understand your focus on commercial viability and success, but as you think about ‘building those futures', you will need to factor in the increasing complexities surrounding your special status - you have, in effect, a legal compact with the community which is and will be the subject of greater examination and questioning in the future.
Another area for greater discussion will be that of prescription drugs - a huge issue which I don't have time to address, but which I was gratified to see President Sclavos tackling in his NPC address.
I also noted with considerable appreciation his emphasis on the community benefit which your network of 5000 pharmacies provides by allowing 95% of the Australia's population to be within two kilometers of one of your businesses. Clearly, this network must be one of the key elements in our national effort to achieve an effective primary and preventative health care system throughout the country.
This seems to me both a daunting and exciting prospect - for those now established within the profession and those contemplating it as a career, you will be in the thick of contemporary challenges with a real capacity to make a difference. As the Forbes magazine article observed "we've come a long way from elixirs and apothecaries."
Just how far was underlined for me when I did some research, for this address, on the origins of your profession. I discovered it has an exceptionally long historical lineage. Indeed, there seems to have been some innate pharmaceutical drive in our nature given that around 50,000 BC the Neanderthals had already created numerous plant-based drugs, dispensed without a prescription! Our own indigenous population equally had worked out a sophisticated system of medicine 40,000 years ago. It's encouraging to see that we are now realising that many of these remedies are of value and to see them being incorporated into ‘new' drugs for our own use.
As pharmacists, the Egyptians were particularly industrious and methodical, it seems: from 1552 BC, we have a papyrus scroll 22 yards long, itemizing 700 drugs. And if you get a headache from listening to all the speeches over the next days, perhaps someone could rustle up for you a particularly exotic headache remedy prepared for the Pharaoh Ra, which contains coriander, worm-wood, juniper, honey and opium.
The history of pharmacy as practiced by white settlers in Australia is no less dotted with interesting facts. It seems a John Tawell, of dubious qualifications, was the first pharmacist to be recognised by the colony's first medical board, established in 1920. He seems to have been pretty successful, given that he was able to retire and return to England in 1845. There is, however, a disturbing postscript: he was later hung for poisoning his mistress. One might be tempted to conclude that Pharmacy is overall, an intriguing profession!
I'm absolutely confident that there are no would-be poisoners among you today - only women of the highest motives, principle and professionalism. I am very pleased to have had the opportunity to meet you and to spend some time with you today and I wish you a very successful conference, with presentations, discussions, networking and social activities that you will find both stimulating and enjoyable. It is now with great pleasure that I declare The Pharmacy Guild of Australia 2009 Women's Congress officially open.
Thank you.