Paul Sinclair, the first Australian president of the International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP) sat down with AJP Podcast host Carlene McMaugh to talk about the pharmacy workforce, challenges like antimicrobial resistance and how best to use AI in health care.

There are many positives boosting the sector right now, Sinclair said, including how the pandemic improved pharmacy’s visibility and moves towards full scope of practice.

When McMaugh asked Sinclair whether he saw elements of the Australian model – such as expanded scope under the Community Pharmacy Agreement – being eyed by other countries, he replied, “Absolutely”.

“As recently as two months ago, the Irish government signed a pharmacy agreement with the Irish Pharmacy Union on behalf of Irish pharmacy to give certainty of remuneration for dispensing and provision of professional services,” Sinclair said.

“That very much is in line with the community pharmacy agreements that we have had so successfully implemented here in Australia.

“In fact, the PBS, as it operates in Australia, is regarded as the best model for a public private partnership to provide pharmaceutical benefits to the population.

“We see across the globe, services such as medication reviews, medication management services, webster packing, pharmacist delivered vaccination, and minor ailment schemes being delivered and funded through community pharmacy.

“This is now happening through all of the major developed pharmacy marketplaces, and we are seeing also in FIP’s role, the advocacy of an increased role for pharmacists in emerging pharmacy markets as well in low to middle income countries.”

Sinclair said that Australia is “very fortunate” to have a public-private partnership with the government, instead of a fully managed healthcare system as seen in the USA.

There, he said, “the payer, normally an insurance company, is focused only on cost rather than health outcomes”.

“So the model we have is acknowledged as being world-class, and we are seeing across particularly developed marketplaces where the payer tends to be the government rather than insurance company, models like the community pharmacy agreement being advocated for and being implemented.”

01:03 – “At the moment, the depressing issue is certainly workforce shortages.”

03:43 – The positive outcomes of Covid

05:15 – AMR: a major issue

07:33 – The beauty of the Australian pharmacy practice model

09:20 – FIP’s Global Observatory data

11:26 – “AI is the two letters on everyone’s lips at the moment.”

13:31 – “FIP’s work is centred on creating positive practise environments, safe staffing, fair scheduling, career development, recognition, including mental health support, anti-harassment policies, and psychologically safe spaces.”

15:36 – Integrating pharmacy into diverse global settings

17:08 – Barriers to scope: “It is definitely legislative.”

18:43 – Equity in medicines access and digital health

23:36 – Financial recognition for professional services

25:10 – “The total reliance on the supply model will not sustain our industry going forward.”

31:03 – Advice for young pharmacists

33:11 – FIP’s development goals

34:37 – Hopes for FIP achievement in 2026

37:42 – A legacy for FIP

39:23 – A look back at a “huge” 2025

42:15 – War, conflict and pharmacy – as well as scope and recognition

44:15 – A thank you to pharmacists

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The AJP Podcast’s Carlene McMaugh sits down with award-winning consultant pharmacist Angus Thompson, who tells her about how he builds rapport with his patients and helps them get the most out of their consultation.

“We are not there to interfere and make changes for changes’ sake,” he explains.

“We’re there to help them get the best outcome. I will invariably ask the patient what do they want to get out of the consultation and what’s important to them because I try to keep everything about the patient and align with their priorities and preferences.

“Some patients may say, ‘I want to take less medicines’, some people may say, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing. I feel confused’.

“So you try and tailor what you do, what you say to reassure them.”

And health literacy is a “huge challenge” for many patients, he says – and tells a tale of one man who had Type 2 diabetes.

“He’d misunderstood instructions from everybody else he’d ever seen,” Thompson says.

“He saw pretty much everybody that a person with diabetes will see: an educator, obviously GP, community pharmacy, dietitian…

“He said something about his insulin. I said, ‘just talk me through how you use your insulin’.

“And he was using one pen for one injection. He was on 10 units of glargine, giving himself 10 units and then throwing away the remaining 290 units.

“And this was simply because somebody had said to him, use a new needle for each injection.

“To him, a new needle was a new pen. So he was visiting his pharmacy every 25 days and costing Medicare over $4,000 a year more than was necessary.

“It is just the way people understand what we say. It’s really important that we check back that they have understood it in the way we want them to.”

02:22 – Building rapport with patients

05:55 – “Different strategies for different patients.”

07:26 – The impact of HMRs – and the man with Type 2 diabetes

09:05 – A patient Thompson had just helped reassure about her medicines

11:13 – Involving the patient in their own decision-making

14:38 – Misconceptions about HMRs

15:42 – “Very rarely are people taking what we think they’re taking.”

17:29 – When patients are reluctant to change

21:49 – HMRs and vulnerable patients

25:14 – Keeping up-to-date

32:07 – Why the cap needs to go

34:32 – New technologies

38:28 – “Transitions of care are such a flashpoint for medication misadventure.”

40:31 – The HMR workforce

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Speaking to host Carlene McMaugh of the AJP Podcast, Wong shared his journey to co-founding MedWest Medical Dispensary in Western Australia, and his his practice and perspective has evolved. 

“Back when I was working in community pharmacy, I was starting to see more and more patients coming in with prescriptions for medicinal cannabis,” he said. “You think ‘Oh, I haven’t really learned much of this at uni’.

“The feedback that I’ve received over time was really eye-opening,” he continued. “People were dealing with chronic pain, sleep issues and anxiety… many of them actually find real relief.”

Other highlights include: 

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“I think everybody’s got a slightly different passion, so it’s trying to work out what drives the pharmacies,” Cooleman Court Pharmacy’s Bev Mistry-Cable told the AJP Podcast’s Carlene McMaugh. 

The winners of the Professional Services Innovation Award say they have developed a host of programs for different pharmacies to help their local communities. 

Medrek added: “Everyone that comes through the pharmacy, we check with them where they’re up to.”

Other highlights include: 

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Speaking during Advanced Pharmacy Australia’s Medicines Management 2025 conference in Melbourne, the three spoke about how residencies can help pharmacists keep getting feedback through their early careers, medicines reconciliation and points of transition, as well as the greater role pharmacists and pharmacy technicians can play in the healthcare system.

Simpson explained that “transitions of care is not a problem we have solved in Australia by any measure”.

“We did some great work obviously this year partnering with the condition on the practise standards around transitions of care, but we’re also looking at how we expand those collaborative prescribing models at the point of discharge,” he said.

“We know discharge summaries and discharge medication lists have a high rate of inaccuracy and there’s hospitals that are already implementing collaborative prescribing models at that point and seeing dramatic reductions, so patients out the door hours quicker with the right medicines.

“Our challenge there is that until we have PBS prescribing rights for pharmacists, all the pharmacists can do is write a prescription and ask the doctor to sign it, and that means that you’re still effectively wasting a lot of time because it’s not a value add activity at that step.

“If they’ve already agreed the treatment plan, then adding a signature to a page doesn’t add value, but it just takes time.”

O’Hara, who has been closely involved in the collaborative prescribing trial in NSW, said that it had been “really exciting this year to see advocacy really pay off”.

NSW and WA “are getting collaborative prescribing over the line” in terms of legislation change, she said.

“So getting that, working with all of the states to get that through has been a really massive achievement. And in New South Wales, those legislation changes are now fixed in the legislation and they’ve acknowledged that partnered pharmacists prescribing or charting is really key to getting people through the emergency rooms faster and getting those medicines right quicker.

“So that’s been a really significant piece of advocacy work that has really paid off for both the profession and for our patients in that space.

“So we continue to really advocate for and encourage for pharmacists prescribing to be done in that collaborative way as part of getting pharmacists embedded in multidisciplinary teams to focus on the medicines and give everybody else the time to do what they do best.”

01:20 – How have the new practise recognition pathways evolved through 2025?

04:20 – The value of the independent pathway

05:38 – Advancements in empowering pharmacy technicians and assistants

08:09 – The launch of AdPha’s clinical standards

09:33 – How can these changes be scaled nationally to free up pharmacists for higher level clinical duties?

11:42 – The difference between a residency and an internship

16:50 – “Our transitions of care are some of the highest risk points in any patient’s journey.”

20:46 – The NSW collaborative prescribing trial

21:52 – “1.3 billion of wasted expenditure in hospitals”

22:58 – Gaps and loopholes in transitions of care

25:09 – The impact of MedsAware Deprescribing Week

27:23 – How is the integration of electronic prescribing and electronic medical records fundamentally changing the clinical workflow of hospital pharmacists and what digital competencies are now essential for new graduates?

28:38 – “I expect to see digital competencies start to be built into our university degrees.”

32:00 – How is AdPha working with regulatory bodies and health services formally recognised the credential specialist, clinical pharmacists, and to ensure the remuneration and role expansion?

35:05 – “We’ve seen employers as well now asking for ANZCAP recognition as part of applications for jobs.”

36:24 – The gap in seven-day clinical pharmacy services

39:25 – Recruitment, retention and burnout

43:25 – Why are there more vacancies?

44:25 – “One nice trend I’m seeing these days is that there is much more of a portability in the profession.”

46:33 – Hopes and goals for 2026

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Among the topics covered in this podcast are:

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Susan Nguyen, a Sydney pharmacy co-owner and founder of ADHD Support Pharmacist, has told AJP Podcast host Carlene McMaugh that she hopes pharmacists will try to gain a better understanding of Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and consider how it affects patients’ lives in multiple ways – including its comorbidities, and what pharmacists can do to help.

She likens it to diabetes in the way that people make negative judgements about a patient’s behaviour – but also contrasts it with regard to the lack of a holistic approach.

“When you look at someone who has diabetes, they experience the judgement, ‘oh, they’ve got diabetes. Oh, they must have been having too much sugar or too many soft drinks. Or their parents probably gave them lollies every day’,” she says.

But even with this wider social stigma, pharmacists do not generally hold negative opinions about people with diabetes, she says, and do consider the wider picture.

“You’re thinking of foot care, wound care, vaccinations, diabetes med checks… diabetes has a lot of, I guess, comorbidities and other conditions and lifestyle factors played as well.

“When you look at ADHD, it’s a lot, just much the same. You’re looking at a lot of comorbidities, you’re looking at lifestyle, you’re looking at complications, you’re looking at as well, the stigma…

“When you care for someone with ADHD and you delve into it more, you start to see there’s anxiety, there’s depression, there’s also [that] unmanaged ADHD means they may be eating, there could be obesity there, drug use work, relationship problems, a whole gamut.

“So it’s where pharmacists need to be.”

Nguyen also looks into misconceptions such as overdiagnosis, that ADHD is a condition mainly affecting boys, and that ADHD medicines may impact quality of life.

And significantly, she speaks about how people with ADHD are judged negatively for their own symptoms.

“The lack of concentration, the disorganisation, the time blindness, not being able to manage your scripts, not getting your scripts.

“It goes out of date, you freak out, the patient rings up and they say, ‘look, I haven’t got any of my medications left’.

“When we hear that it could be easily seen as they’re being lazy, they’ve been so they’ve let themselves down to let us down.

“It’s such a hassle. It’s inconvenient, but it’s the presenting symptom, and they’re stigmatised for their presenting symptoms.

“We’re actually, as healthcare professionals, as pharmacists, as even as society, we’re almost punishing people with ADHD for what they have, whereas someone with diabetes, they might have more UTIs, they might have infections that just don’t heal, that sort of stuff.

“But there’s a lot of support. And that’s because we look at the symptoms, we understand the pathophysiological side, but because of that lack of, I guess, understanding of ADHD, it’s become more of about a character flaw or character trait.

“And so that really makes it hard for, I guess, healthcare professionals to show that care and support.

“And I feel that this is where we need to really, as pharmacists making that stance on that and then supporting our patients in a much better way.”

01:21 – Why does ADHD need more attention in pharmacy?

04:18 – The comparison with diabetes

07:14 – ADHD in women and inattentive symptoms

08:11 – The role of social media

12:26 – Will medication “fix it up”?

14:04 – How can we widen our views?

16:32 – “With stimulant prescribing, it is hard.”

18:10 – The consequences of unmanaged ADHD

20:44 – How do we share information?

21:49 – “Pharmacists may think, oh, they’re going to get tolerant when they take  Ritalin for so long.”

23:10 – “If you’ve seen a patient who comes in with their prescription for Vyvanse, we can’t assume that, hey, everything’s under control.”

26:27 – The carer’s perspective

28:37 – Pharmacists with ADHD

32:39 – “We need more pharmacists to really be in that space to advocate for patients.”

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National Australian Pharmacist Students Association national president Sebastian Harper has opened up to AJP Podcast host Carlene McMaugh about the financial pressures on pharmacy students – and how NAPSA aims to take a greater role in advocacy for the profession.

“There really needs to be a revolution in how we approach placements, and this doesn’t just go for pharmacy, but this is, as far as I understand, pretty much all health disciplines,” Harper says.

He highlights the increasing cost of living throughout the 2020s… “which I think everyone, not just in Australia but around the world is very conscious of”.

“But students, young people, but also mature age students, many who might have a mortgage, they might have kids at home that they have to feed. The cost of living crisis is really hitting hard and that’s why we’re trying to, in our capacity as a student organisation, mitigate that as much as possible.”

Students are literally having to decide whether they can afford to buy food or pay rent at their usual home, and actually finish their placements, Harper says.

He also talks about the “hidden costs” of prac placements – from uniforms to transport and hospital parking – as well as offering some advice for preceptors.

But there have been positive developments as well, he says – not only have some disciplines been granted prac payments, there are options such as government housing for students.

“I had a fantastic experience on placement where I was in Mount Isa and I was housed with about six other students from other health disciplines,” he enthuses.

“We had a couple speechies, we had a medicine student, dental student physio, science, so there were a lot of different disciplines there, and it was great to just for our mental wellbeing, but also the idea of us being better interprofessional collaborators in the future that after each shift we got to almost debrief about our days and interesting cases we saw.

“I learned more about what speechies do there purely by just talking to them.”

He also tells McMaugh about the establishment of the Health Students Alliance, a new organisation bringing together just over 40 health student associations across the country.

00:56 – Priorities for NAPSA

02:38 – The cost of living, and lack of prac payments

03:38 – The impact of placement poverty

05:57 – Advocating for a highly feminised workforce

08:00 – Hidden costs

10:47 – “I’ve just anecdotally heard from my members on calls or at events and things like that, but they’re literally going hungry throughout the entire day.”

11:47 – How financial pressures impact health

14:41 – Youth allowance and advocacy

19:40 – Some solutions

23:38 – How can pharmacists support their students?

26:04 – The potential for impact on the future workforce

30:24 – How to find your niche

33:17 – Some of NAPSA’s key initiatives – including splitting the rural and Indigenous chair positions

37:10 – “The future of pharmacy is incredibly exciting.”

39:52 – “The biggest thing that registered pharmacists can do is just enable the excitement of the next generation.”

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Murdock tells the AJP Podcast’s Carlene McMaugh about the many times she has reinvented herself – from arriving in Australia from war-torn Iraq “with nothing, just hope” to the time she walked away from a job that refused to offer her, a single mother, the flexibility she needed to parent her son.

“I think people often think of pharmacists as people that dispense and dispense scripts and check scripts, but once they get to know me, they realise our impact goes far beyond the pharmacy doors,” she says.

“We’re often the first point of contact for someone who’s scared in crisis, overwhelmed or in pain, and we’re quite often educating or triaging. We listen a lot and we are often in people’s lives for a very long time, so we have conversations we support, we offer support, and we build trust and that’s where the real impact happens, not just inside the pharmacy but out in their community every single day.”

For Murdock, this means “hands-on” health delivery in Pascoe Vale, where she works, going to local clubs to do free blood pressure checks, getting involved with Rotary, overhauling her pharmacy to put in consulting rooms and talking at schools and local football cubs.

But it also means really being there when it matters to patients.

“I’ll never forget this lady who came into the pharmacy one late afternoon. I remember it clearly because she wasn’t a regular patient and she looked completely overwhelmed.

“She had a toddler on one hip and a script and her hand and her eyes looked quite puffy that she’d been crying and on paper at the time it looked like just a repeat for an antidepressant that you could have dispensed, but something just didn’t feel right and instead of just processing her prescription, I asked her gently at the time, ‘how are you? Are you okay?’

“And she broke down, she hadn’t slept, she hadn’t eaten properly and she’d just left the home because of an abusive partner.

“And she said to me, I didn’t know where else to go. So I came here and in that moment the pharmacy became more than a pharmacy.

“I brought her into the consult room, gave her space to breathe, linked her to support services, and I contacted her GP to coordinate the next steps.

“But more than that, I made her feel safe, seen, not rushed and not judged. And I remember her saying that I was the very first person who didn’t look away and that interaction has stayed with me forever.

“I believe behind every prescription is someone surviving something and sometimes the difference we make isn’t in the medicine, but in the way we choose to show up.”

01:13 – “Sliding doors” – why Murdock left one pharmacy job, finding her way to one which was “amazing”

02.23 – What people don’t realise about pharmacists

04:03 – “We’ve built a culture I’m very proud of where every voice is heard.”

04:46 – Helping a desperate customer

05:51 – Advice on handling difficult situations

08:07 – “I’ve had to reinvent myself quite a few times and it started early.”

10:54 – What keeps you going?

11.29 – “Balanced? What’s that word?”

12:49 – Transforming health care in Pascoe Vale

15:32 – Beyond the pharmacy walls

16:57 – If you could change one thing in the pharmacy profession, what would it be?

17:38 – Advice for pharmacists starting out

18:49 – “Balance doesn’t mean perfect proportions every single day.”

19:04 – AI and pharmacy

20:29 – How Murdock’s pharmacy evolves to meet the community’s needs

20: 51 – How does the future look?

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“There is still a lot of people who are scared of AI,” says Andrew Bartlett, academic at the University of Sydney’s School of Pharmacy, and PhD candidate.

“Students are afraid to use it. They think they’’re going to get caught cheating.”

But “The way that university, particularly the University of Sydney works now, is that we have assessments to help learning and we have assessments of learning and AI is allowed in those assessments where it’s helping learning.

“I think there’s a misconception [that] whatever you put in is private and I don’t think it is. And so I think there’s some serious concerns that people need to take into consideration about what they put into AI.”

Bartlett has been having his students help him develop AI agents – “it’s a bit of a class project”.

“I have a pharmacy management tutor and we use it in the class, so I’ll give them a topic, say we’re talking about the pharmacy employment landscape in different areas of Australia.

“I might give each little table group a prompt and they put it into the agent and then collectively they’ve got to come up with a three minute presentation that they’ve got to teach back the class.

“So they quite like doing that. It means that there’s almost like an extra one of me accessible when they need it.

“When it comes to exam preparation as well, it’s got all my teaching resources in there, they can ask it questions, I can train it to behave a bit like I would in the way that it asks questions.

“So I’m accessible 24 hours, but I still get to sleep.”

01:12 – Bartlett’s background in pharmacy, and how he became interested in AI

02:18 – “I was seeing them use AI in classrooms and I was seeing that they were using it really badly.”

03:24 – AI misconceptions

04:37 – How students respond to the AI agents

06:48 – AI for patient counselling scenarios

08:50 – The key benefits of simulated patient interactions

09:39 – How to minimise mistakes

11:16 – “AI can be quite good at stepping someone through a reflective process.”

13:02 – Bridging the gap between theoretical knowledge and real-world pharmacy skills

14:29 – How could AI change a pharmacist’s day-to-day role?

15:56 – “It’s interesting looking at the biases that come through.”

19:24 – What skills do pharmacists need in an AI-driven future?

21:35 – Getting up to speed

22:36 – The next frontier

25:17 – Embracing AI in business

You can access the full transcript of this podcast here. While we endeavour to ensure all important words and phrases are correct, please note there may be some minor inaccuracies in the transcription.

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