COVID-19 Health Workers

The Hon. T.J. STEPHENS (14:49): My question is to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. Will the minister update the council on how the pharmacy profession has innovated to respond to COVID-19?

The Hon. S.G. WADE (Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:49): I thank the honourable member for his question. The COVID-19 pandemic has presented immense challenges in ensuring accessibility, availability and the safety of medication use, particularly for many of our most vulnerable and unwell consumers. The profession has stepped up to play its part in meeting these challenges, ensuring appropriate and safe supply of vital medicines, and extended their role implementing new initiatives to support their patients and to protect their staff.

The Marshall Liberal government appreciates the collaboration of the pharmacy profession to implement initiatives swiftly and seamlessly. Some of these initiatives included pharmacists being given temporary authorisation to dispense a prescription medicine based on a digital image of the prescription, consistent with the commonwealth decision to fund PBS prescriptions provided in this way to support telehealth consultations.

Regulatory changes were made to enable the use of electronic prescriptions. Electronic prescriptions provide many advantages, including reducing the potential for prescribing and dispensing errors and, importantly, providing another opportunity to protect community members and healthcare providers from exposure to COVID-19.

South Australia adopted the commonwealth's expanded continued dispensing initiative to broaden the range of medicines community pharmacists can supply to consumers under these arrangements. We also established emergency supply arrangements to further support consumers to access their medicines when, due to no fault of their own, they are unable to obtain a prescription. Regulatory changes were introduced to allow pharmacists to substitute a medicine in serious national shortages in accordance with a TGA Serious Shortage Medicine Substitution Notice.

Last Friday, I had the privilege of attending the Pharmaceutical Society SA/NT Branch annual Celebration of Excellence in Pharmacists Care. I acknowledge that the shadow minister for pharmacies was also there, the Hon. Tung Ngo.

The Hon. D.W. Ridgway: A very hardworking shadow minister.

The Hon. S.G. WADE: Indeed. It was an opportunity for me to honour the role of the pharmacy profession and the role they have played in the pandemic. I want to congratulate the award winners and acknowledge their important role in improving health outcomes for our community.

In particular, I was delighted to see that Dr Manya Angley was recognised as the Pharmacist of the Year. Dr Angley has made an exceptional contribution to pharmacy, both practically and academically. Dr Angley has a particular interest in the use of psychotropic medications and the ongoing need for pharmacists to be involved in the care for people with intellectual disability.

As a person responsible for both mental health and the delivery of healthcare services to people with a disability, to bring together mental health services and disability services in the way that Dr Angley does is highly commendable. I also acknowledge that Dr Angley recently was a witness at the disability royal commission, and I trust that her wisdom can have an impact through that contribution.

The Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to retired Adelaide pharmacist David Cosh for his outstanding and ongoing contribution to pharmacy over a 40-year career. David was acknowledged as a pioneer in pharmacy, particularly in educating future generations of pharmacists and improving opportunities in this field.

Stacey Putland received the Early Career Pharmacist Award in recognition of her service to the regional community. Stacey has been a strong advocate for greater accountability for medication safety and embedding pharmacy services in aged care.

The PSA also recognised the outstanding academic achievements of Clarissa Chai with a Gold Medal Award. Clarissa is now completing her intern pharmacy program following her graduation from UniSA. To all of the award winners and finalists, I congratulate them on their innovation and hard work and look forward to their ongoing contribution to South Australia as part of our amazing pharmacy profession.