In a development that is set to further push the case of pharmacists to administer vaccinations, the pharmacy faculty at Charles Sturt University (CSU) has started training its students to immunise.
Fourth year pharmacy students finishing at the end of this year will be qualified in administering vaccinations after the university introduced the component at the start of the current semester.
Last week, the Tasmanian government confirmed that a swine flu vaccination program would be rolled out to additional pharmacies this month after a trial offering free swine flu jabs in the state's pharmacies proved to be very popular.
"We are preparing pharmacists for vaccination on the basis that we are convinced that it will come," SCU pharmacy professor Patrick Ball told Pharmacy News.
"It is going to come to a head in the near future. So it is to some extend pre-empting that."
Prof Ball said between 80 and 90 per cent of US adults were getting their vaccinations in pharmacies with every state in the US now allowing pharmacists to administer vaccines.
He said pharmacy students at CSU would not only be taught the practical steps of administering vaccines, but also how to deal with first aid problems that may arise.
"Anaphylaxis is what everyone thinks of but, in actual fact, anaphylaxis is remarkably rare and, provided you have EpiPens available, the vast majority of people entering anaphylaxis will survive," Prof Ball said.
"More of a problem is actually identifying those patients who just faint at the sight of a needle. So we'll be teaching them to identify such episodes."
He believed, however, that if pharmacies were going to "go down this road" of administering vaccines, they would need to have private areas within the premises to do that.