Pharmacies are playing an increasingly important role in the primary health care of Australians as they adopt a global trend towards self-medication and as growing numbers of medicines move from Prescription Only to Pharmacy Only status.
However, most of the 5,000 or so community pharmacies in Australia still offer a largely untrained workforce of pharmacy assistants as the first and last points of consumer contact within the pharmacy.
Only a fraction of the estimated 35,000 pharmacy assistants working in Australia have completed any formal training; and addressing the shortfall is a critical issue for the industry.
Community pharmacy in Australia has long been wary of the threat of its absorption by big retail; with good reason, as supermarket giant Woolworths has already...
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