Launch Of PSNZ Position Statement And Priority Areas Of Focus

• We are facing a crisis. New Zealand’s pharmacy teams are doing all they can to care for their patients in the face of unsustainable workloads, inadequate funding and supply chain issues. The increased pressures have had a negative impact on our members’ health and wellbeing.
• Pharmacists are highly skilled and accessible which makes them invaluable, complementing the work done by other healthcare teams in community, primary and secondary settings.
• It’s important pharmacists and technicians are supported and funded appropriately to keep New Zealanders and our health system healthy and safe. The current funding model is not sustainable, or fit for purpose. We will continue to advocate strongly on behalf of our members for sustainable funding with key stakeholders.
• Our vision is to have patient-centred care, easy access to services, where pharmacists are seen as the experts in medicines in all settings and are supported by sustainable funding to work at the top of their scope of practice, and where technicians are valued and have clear career pathways.

Areas of Priority Focus

1. Sustainable funding – inadequate funding is impacting on the quality and safety of care provided by our members in community, primary care and hospital settings. With more funding pharmacists can maintain and extend services, helping to take pressure off general practice, hospital systems and supporting the Government’s Policy Statement on Health.

2. Supporting our workforce – our 2024 workforce survey highlights the negative impact unsustainable workloads and inadequate funding are having on our members and their patients. This leads to pharmacy becoming an unattractive career with pharmacists opting out of pharmacy including new entrants, damaging workforce supply and continuity.

3. Addressing pressure in rural pharmacies – our workforce survey and member emails to our advocacy inbox show how urgent changes are needed to support rural pharmacy. More needs to be done to ensure the sustainability of pharmacy services in rural Aotearoa.

4. Sustainability of PSNZ’s training programme now and in the future – ensuring there is sustainable funding for our Intern Training Programme is important. It is a key programme which delivers high-quality training to the next generation of pharmacists. The future of the PACT programme also requires sustainable funding to ensure the continued development of our technician workforce.

5. Pharmacy technicians should become a registered workforce - offering the potential to expand their areas of work and release pharmacists’ time.

6. Pharmacists should be recognised as medicines experts – hospital pharmacists should be supported and enabled to work at their full scope of practice as part of the multidisciplinary teams supporting patients. Community and general practice pharmacists should also be supported to work at their full scope of practice with their patients and in multidisciplinary teams in primary care.

7. Minor health conditions service – the success of the minor health conditions service pilot shows how a national rollout of the scheme would enable broader easy access to a high-quality service by pharmacists, taking some pressure of general practice and potentially ED. To roll out a minor health conditions service nationally is estimated to cost around $33 million a year.

8. Supply chain issues and approval of medicines – ongoing supply change challenges including funding remain a key issue. We need systems to better support patients and our members, and develop solutions that will improve timely access, enabling better patient care.

© Scoop Media