Exploring career advancement of pharmacy support staff within two Queensland hospitals: a qualitative study

Abstract

Background Internationally, pharmacy assistants and technicians have expanded their roles to allow pharmacists to concentrate on more clinical duties. The Australian model of care is currently exploring avenues for strategic role expansion for these support staff. Aim To qualitatively explore pharmacist and support staff views on the training needs of Australian pharmacy support staff. Methods Ethics approval was obtained from both Metro South Human Research Ethics Committee and UnitingCare HREC prior to the commencement of the study. Semi‐structured interviews were conducted with personnel from the private and public settings to explore key issues identified in the literature. Interviews were conducted either face‐to‐face or via telephone between October 2017 and August 2018, with a mean duration of 39.85 min. NVivo® 11 qualitative software was used to consolidate the data. The general inductive approach was used for thematic data analysis, which allowed for the emergence of new themes and sub‐themes within the research topic. Results A total of 25 participants consisting of 10 pharmacists and 15 pharmacy support staff were recruited from a private (n = 13) and a public (n = 12) hospital in South‐East Queensland. Participants across both pharmacist and pharmacy support staff expressed inadequacy in current certification level, resulting in a need for further on‐the‐job training. The main reported facilitators to pursue further training were organisational support, career progression and remuneration. The main reported barriers were training cost and lack of time. Conclusions This exploratory study provides critical insights into the evolving needs of support staff that can inform innovative strategic role expansion for efficient and sustainable training.

Pharmacy Forecast Australia 2022: key findings

“…Additionally, the majority of training for this workforce is conducted locally in house. This is supported by recently published research by Cheong et al., 27 which found ongoing perceptions of inadequacy regarding current certifications, resulting in the need for more in‐house training, while highlighting the cost of further education and lack of remuneration as major barriers to address. It is interesting that this year's FPs were optimistic this challenge would be addressed.…”