Episode Transcript
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Music.
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Hello, welcome to the Kind Side Stories from New South Wales Health Podcast.
I'm your host, Frances Wood. Today you're going to hear a conversation I had
with Charlotte in hospital.
Charlotte is a ward pharmacist, so she works with multidisciplinary teams and
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patients within our hospital wards and also in the hospital's central pharmacy.
Charlotte talks to us about why she wanted to become a pharmacist,
what it's like, how she experiences kindness,
how she's kind to herself, and of course, what we can do to show kindness to
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pharmacists like Charlotte.
I hope you enjoy this conversation. And as always, thank you for joining us
to look on the kind side of health.
All right, Charlotte, so can you tell me what brings you to hospital?
So I work here. I'm a clinical pharmacist.
Okay. And just for our listeners, what does it mean to be a clinical pharmacist in a hospital?
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Yeah, look, excellent question. So my role encompasses a really wide range of
activities and responsibilities.
My main focus is being on the ward, interacting with patients and consumers, as well as with nurses,
doctors, and other members of the allied health team to ensure that medications
that patients were taking at home are recorded correctly when they come into
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hospital and to make sure that they get the right medicine while they're in hospital.
I also do a lot of discharge medication education, so preparing medication lists
so patients know what they have to take when they go home and providing education
around new medication so they know what to expect once they're out of the hospital environment.
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Another big role is ensuring there's no interactions between medications when
new things are started or stopped and just being there as a point of reference
for other staff if they have any questions or issues with medications.
It sounds really complicated. What sort of education and development process
did you have to go through to be a ward pharmacist?
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So to be a pharmacist in Australia, we do a four-year university course as well
as a one-year internship.
So after we complete our university degree, which is usually a bachelor or a master's of pharmacy,
we then do one year of working in a workplace, either a hospital or a community
pharmacy, where we practice with supervision vision and learn all the practical
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skills that you need to be a pharmacist.
In terms of working for New South Wales Health, there's no additional education
requirements, just that university degree.
And what attracted you to becoming a pharmacist?
Yeah, so I really loved science when I was at school. So biology and chemistry
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were my two big passions.
I didn't really know what I wanted to do after I finished year 12.
I knew I wanted to do something in health. I wanted to help people.
And my brother-in-law is actually a pharmacist and he encouraged me to apply.
And so I did and I got in. And as I went through university and did placements
and became, I guess, more familiar with what a pharmacist actually does,
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I realised that this is the job and the career for me.
There's just so many ways that can help people in pharmacy and in health in
general. So yeah, it worked out really well for me.
And so what do you love about the job? I love being able to provide education.
So something I'm really passionate about is education to pharmacists,
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to nurses, doctors, other allied health, as well as to patients.
So especially that discharge education to patients, making sure they know what's
going on, what they need to do and how to take their medications when they go home.
I also love being able to, I guess, like dispel myths around medication.
So a big thing sometimes is patients will come in and they've stopped a medication
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because they think that it's making their condition worse, or they think that
they're getting really significant side effects from it.
And I can talk it through with the patient and make sure that they know why
they need to take it, what the risks are with not taking it.
And I guess empower them to take control of their own health and their medication,
and make sure that they have all the available information they need to be able
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to take their medication and live the best healthy life that they can.
And you've got some lovely purple scrubs on.
Is that so you can be easily identified in the hospital ward environment?
That's exactly it. So up until probably 2023, pharmacists just wore,
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you know, neat business wear.
And we often found that we got lost among the staff in the hospital.
So an initiative was brought forward by one of our pharmacists to invest in
these purple scrubs. and now it's not compulsory to wear, but most of our pharmacists do wear them.
It makes us really visible on the ward for anyone.
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If we're working in a new area and people don't know who we are or what we do,
they can see the purple scrubs and know immediately that we're the ward pharmacist.
The reason we chose purple is because back in the day when we had paper charts,
pharmacists would annotate their little notes on the chart in purple pen.
So we've kind of just continued that tradition with the purple scrubs.
Oh, that's wonderful. I never knew that.
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And it sounds like as a ward pharmacist in a hospital, you're working with lots
of different people, be it patients, carers, families, other clinicians, allied health.
What's your sort of approach to that teamwork, I guess, aspect of the role?
So, yeah, you're absolutely right. Communication and collaboration is a major part of that.
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Our work as pharmacists. It's impossible for us to work in a bubble.
We do have to work really closely with lots of other people.
So a big thing for us is just being present. People can see us in our purple
scrubs and approach us with any questions or queries.
We're in constant contact with the teams and with patients and carers and their
families just to ensure that everyone is aware of what's happening.
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Yeah, we carry pages with us as well as using the new Microsoft Teams team's application.
So again, we're in constant contact with everyone we need to be.
And do you sort of care for one ward or do you work across different wards?
Yeah. So at Wollongong Hospital, most of our pharmacists are rotational pharmacists.
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So we are allocated a ward for six to 12 months and we work exclusively on that ward.
And then after that time we rotate to another ward.
Different hospitals do it different ways. They might allocate a pharmacist to
a team so that pharmacist will see all of the patients within that team no matter
where they are in the hospital.
But yeah, at Wollongong, we are allocated a ward. Yeah.
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And you spoke before about how much you enjoy educating and empowering particularly
patients on the medications that they may need to use and how to use them the best way.
What's sort of your approach I guess in hospital with patients who might have
some fears or worries about the medication that we're recommending they take?
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Yeah so things that something the pharmacists do really well is taking the time
to sit with patients and listen to those concerns you know we take on board
what they say and explain in patient-friendly terms you know try try to address
those fears or concerns,
as well as enforce, I guess, the rationale behind why something has been prescribed.
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We do allow patients to...
Patients are allowed to take control of their own health and they are the ultimate
decision makers, but we try to ensure that they have all the available information.
If there's a particular reason why they don't want to take something because
of past personal experience or a family member has had a bad experience with
a particular medication,
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then we can discuss alternatives as well and take that back to the treating
team to see if an alternative medication would be appropriate.
But we understand that there's no point in prescribing and supplying a medication
if the patient is going to go home and not take it because they don't want to.
So we do our best to find a good middle ground between the most effective medications
as well as medication that the patient is actually going to take.
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That's such a wonderful approach because I think sometimes we can forget how
important it is for patients to have that buy-in and that engagement in those decisions.
And like you said, they're more likely to then participate in the care plan
or the medication plan if they feel like they're a part of the decisions being
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made. That's exactly right. Yeah, that's wonderful.
And you obviously interact with a lot of people here every day in hospital.
Is there a particular act of kindness that you've seen or experienced that you could share with us?
So the biggest acts of kindness I see on a daily basis is within the pharmacy team.
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So, you know, if someone's having a particularly bad day or a particularly busy
day or complicated day, people are always, other pharmacists are always willing to jump in and help.
So, for example, because each pharmacist is allocated their own ward,
they do all of the medication requests and all of the discharge counselling.
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It's not unusual to have 10 discharges in a day, in which case that's,
you know, quite an interruption to our workflow. flow.
And so other pharmacists will often jump in and help out where they can.
And then within the ward environment, just a very simple act of kindness is
bringing in a box of chocolates, you know, to acknowledge the work that the
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team and the ward is doing.
That can come from either like a staff member, you know, acknowledging their team.
It can come from a patient's family member if they really appreciate everything that's being done.
Or it can come from management, which is always appreciated as well.
Absolutely. Who doesn't love chocolate? Yeah.
And what are some of the ways that you're kind to yourself?
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Yeah, so great question. It can be tough in this line of work to find time to
be kind to yourself, but the biggest one for me is making sure that I'm always
taking my allocated breaks.
So stepping away for the 20 to 30 minutes twice a day, going outside even on
gloomy days like today, day, just finding time to get out in some fresh air and breathe deeply.
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As well as, you know, taking time to decompress after work and reflect on the
day that I've had, as well as to reflect on the, you know, not just the bad
things, but also the good things or the things that went well that day really
helps me not only switch off from work,
but also appreciate the work that I'm doing each day.
I think it's hard in health because you know that there are people waiting at
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the end of the line, but if you don't take the time to care for yourself,
you can't give them the best possible care.
Absolutely. Like you said, taking those breaks and then doing that decompressing
after work, it's really important.
Yeah, and, you know, doing things at home to kind of help take my mind off work
as well, like playing with my dog, going for walks, going for swims in the ocean,
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things like that. Yeah, beautiful.
What sort of dog do you have? I have a Kelpie cross-border collie,
so lots of energy, which is good because it gets my energy out as well. It's roundabout. Yeah.
And, Charlotte, what's something, if there was one thing we could do to show
you kindness here at work, what would that be?
A simple smile in the hallway sometimes is all it takes.
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When you're having a really awful day, just, you know, walking past,
even if you don't know the person, just smiling at them, saying hello.
And listening to this podcast to get an idea of what the roles and responsibilities
are of other people in the team.
It can be really easy to forget that other people in the team have,
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of, you know, other responsibilities as well.
It's easy to kind of focus on your own job and yeah, forget that everyone else
has time pressures and, you know, a heavy workload as well.
So yeah, just like I said, smiling at people and just allowing time for things to happen, I guess.
Things don't happen instantly, especially in health and just acknowledging that
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and, you know, trying not to put pressure on other members of the team to get
things done in unreasonable time frames.
A little bit more patience because we're all doing our best in a very complex.
Yeah, it can be hard because obviously we want to get people home into their
own beds as soon as possible.
But sometimes that's not possible or it does take a bit of time.
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Pharmacy especially is often, you know, cited as the thing that's holding up
a discharge because we happen right at the end of everything.
Thing once everyone's signed off and the doctors have written the prescriptions,
we're then waiting on pharmacy for things to happen.
But there's so many checks and balances that go into dispensing medications
and ensuring that it's safe and all that education that I mentioned earlier.
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So yeah, just acknowledging that pharmacy and medication supply takes time.
I'm really glad you touched on that because I think for a lot of patients and
carers and family, like you said, that waiting for discharge and being told,
well, we're waiting on pharmacy.
So just to have that context that it's really important that the checks and
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balances are done or the education provided so that they can use those medications safely at home,
but also that there might be 20 discharges that you're trying to process at
the same time and to give every one of those patients that same.
Yeah, exactly. You know, sometimes we get people out very fast if they're the only discharge.
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But like you said, it's not uncommon to have 20 or 30 in line waiting to go
or waiting to be processed.
So it can take time. Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Charlotte,
for helping us look on the kind side of health.
It's been lovely talking to you. And thank you so much for having me.
I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Charlotte, a ward pharmacist working in our hospital.
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And I just like to invite you to take a moment to reflect on something that
stayed with you from that conversation.
And of course, to think about the opportunity you have to be kinder to yourself
and also to be kinder to other people in health, whether that's your colleagues,
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the people caring for you, or the patients that you're caring for,
carers, family members, or anyone else that might find themselves in a hospital setting.
Thank you as always for joining us on the kind side and I look forward to my
next conversation in health.
If you feel like you need to talk after listening
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to this episode please reach out and
speak to someone trusted in your life or you
can call lifeline on 13 11 14 24
hours a day seven days a week take care this podcast was recorded on darawal
country i'd like to acknowledge and pay my deep respects to the elders past
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present and future and extend that respects to any aboriginal or torres strait
islander people listening.
I'd also like to acknowledge the lived experiences and the wisdom of all the
people who spoke to me for this podcast and those listening. Thank you.