Professor Susan Tett named Australian Pharmacist of the Year

Professor Susan Tett named Australian Pharmacist of the Year

The head of the University of Queensland's School of Pharmacy, Professor Susan Tett, has been named 1999 Australian Pharmacist of the Year by the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia.

Professor Tett, who has headed the school for three years, was chosen for excellence in her contribution to research, teaching, practice and mentoring.

She won the Glaxo Wellcome Medal of Merit in 1997, having overseen the revamping of the pharmacy course and its extension from three years to four years.

"Students now undertake clinical placement during every year of their course, rather than only in the last year," Professor Tett said after receiving the Pharmacist of the Year medal.

"The second year includes compulsory rural placement. We hope the ties formed and understanding of rural life gained through these placements will help overcome the shortage of pharmacists in country areas in future years."

There was a shortage of pharmacists nationwide and full employment for graduates, she said.

"The pharmaceuticals area is growing all the time and there are so many things pharmacists can do. Many more pharmacists are working with health care teams and there is a much greater emphasis on information, rather than purely on dispensing as might once have been the case.

"In rural areas, for example, pharmacists these days are just as likely to be undertaking medication reviews with the local doctor as dispensing medicine at their pharmacy," Professor Tett said.

"Pharmacy is such a specialised discipline with so many new drugs being developed that doctors can't be expected to keep up with all the new information to assist prescribing. Pharmacists are ideally placed to advise in this area."

Before taking up her position at the University of Queensland at the end of 1995, Professor Tett was a research fellow at St Vincent's Hospital in Sydney and taught medical and pharmacy students at the University of Sydney and University of New South Wales.

The 1999 Young Pharmacist of the Year is also a Queenslander, Kos Sclavos, who is president of the Queensland branch of the Pharmacy Guild and sits on the University of Queensland School of Pharmacy's Board of Studies. He has been instrumental in introducing quality standards in community pharmacy (local chemists).

For more information, contact Professor Tett (telephone 07 3365 3191).