Introduction: Recent shifts in the healthcare landscape necessitate a re-evaluation of hospital pharmacy education roles. With increasing demands for skilled pharmacists, robust educational programs are crucial to prepare for dynamic clinical environments. However, the services provided by Australian hospital education pharmacists (EPs) are not well-defined. The 2013 Advanced Pharmacy Australia (AdPha) Standards of Practice for Clinical Pharmacy Services suggest a ratio of one education pharmacist per 10 interns or 50 pharmacists, which may not align with current needs.
Methods:This study aimed to investigate the educational services provided by Australian hospital EPs, their staffing levels, and satisfaction with service provision. A HREC-approved electronic survey was distributed to Directors of Pharmacy (DoP) at Australian healthcare services (HCS) in February 2024, targeting responses from senior EPs or DoPs, aiming at one response per HCS.
Results: Responses were received from 65 HCS nationwide. Notably, 86.2% had dedicated EPs. Common services included continued education (91.1%), intern programs (89.3%), recruitment/training (87.5%), and student placements (85.7%). However, many other additional services not covered by the 2013 Standards include research (71.4%) and residency programs (57.1%), technician education (53.6%), line management (48.1%), technology (37.5%) and extended scope-of-practice training (32.1%) were also provided. Alarmingly, 79.5% of services reported EP staffing below 2013 recommended levels, with a median of 1 [0.25;1.5] EP, compared to the expected 2.3 [1.1;3.2]. Only 37.5% of EPs consistently worked all allocated education hours.
Levels of satisfaction with service provision varied, with high satisfaction for registrar (78.6%) and intern programs (71.4%), but lower for work-based assessments (29.7%), research (30.4%) and extended scope-of-practice training (31.3%).
Conclusion: While Australian hospital EPs deliver a wide range of educational services, insufficient staffing and time constraints hinder their effectiveness. It is crucial for healthcare services to prioritise EP staffing to enhance workforce development.

Introduction: The number of podiatrists endorsed to prescribe is increasing. Prescribing podiatrists require mandatory continuing professional development (CPD) specific to their prescribing practice, however, CPD resources often do not meet prescribing podiatrists’ needs in terms of content, relevance, accessibility, and meaningfulness. Furthermore, interprofessional collaboration, known to improve patient and organisational outcomes, requires understanding and appreciation of each other’s roles. Interprofessional learning between podiatrists and pharmacists could address CPD needs and improve practice.
This study aimed to explore role understanding, perceptions of, and potential for, interprofessional learning between prescribing podiatrists and pharmacists.
Methods: Australian prescribing podiatrists and pharmacists participated in four homogenous focus groups via ZoomTM. Participants were asked about their opinions, feelings, experiences and knowledge relating to the roles of each discipline and interprofessional learning between the professional groups. Focus group discussions were transcribed verbatim and underwent reflexive inductive thematic analysis.
Results: Fifteen podiatrists and 15 pharmacists participated in the focus groups. Four themes were evident in the data: Experience drives understanding of each other; Exposure is influenced by work setting; Reflections on and frustrations with health system issues; The vision for interprofessional learning in the future.

Overall, prescribing podiatrists and pharmacists held positive about the potential benefits and feasibility of interprofessional CPD to support the clinical use of medicines, build stronger relationships, and collaborative healthcare practices. Both groups acknowledged awareness of the prescribing podiatrist role and training was lacking and contributed to common frustrations with system issues. Pharmacists advocated for interprofessional learning with podiatrists at undergraduate level to align with their positive experiences with other professional groups. Suggestions for learning modes, facilitators and topics were collated.
Conclusion: When developing undergraduate courses, CPD and advanced training programs, podiatry and pharmacy education providers should consider the benefits of interprofessional learning and the desire of the two professional groups to learn together.

Introduction: This study aims to explore the level of entrustment (and associated level of supervision) expected of learners at defined time points in intern pharmacy training.
Methods: Registered and provisionally registered (intern) pharmacists in Australia were invited to participate in an anonymous online survey. Participants provided demographic information and articulated the level of supervision they expect an intern pharmacist to require for three entrustable professional activities (EPAs) using a 5-level entrustment scale. The three EPAs that are required in the Australian intern training program are dispensing, compounding, and providing medication counselling.
Results: A total of 302 responses were received (82 intern pharmacists and 220 registered pharmacists). Intern pharmacists’ self-perceived level of entrustment was higher (entrustment levels of 4 and 5) compared to pharmacists’ expected entrustment of interns at the midpoint and final point of intern training for dispensing (p < 0.037 and p < 0.003 respectively) and compounding (p < 0.007 and p < 0.000 respectively). Pharmacists in community pharmacy and hospital dispensary settings expected intern pharmacists to practice with more autonomy (entrustment levels of 4 and 5) compared with hospital clinical pharmacists at the final point of intern training for the compounding (p = 0.015) and counselling (p = 0.000). There was a medium consensus (50 – 74.9% overall agreement at any one entrustment level) reached by all pharmacists on the level of entrustment expected of intern pharmacists at different time points in training for all three EPAs.
Conclusion: There is a lack of consensus amongst registered pharmacists regarding the level of supervision expected of interns at defined time points in training. Entrustment decisions by registered pharmacists of intern pharmacists may differ with practice setting. Intern pharmacists’ self-perceived entrustment of their performance was higher than that of registered pharmacists, suggesting a potential gap in metacognitive skills amongst intern pharmacists.

Introduction: Usability testing provides valuable information when ensuring newly developed education programs are deemed acceptable to the target audience prior to implementation. The aim is to evaluate the usability of an online, evidence-based pharmacogenomics education program, developed in-house, according to the POUR principles (perceivable, operable, understandable, robust), in order to subsequently improve the user experience before wide scale implementation to pharmacists at an Australian public hospital.
Methods: The methodology was adapted from Benedict et al. (2022) with permission. Five pharmacist-users tested up to two of eight modules utilising the think-aloud method. Participants’ video, audio and screens were recorded, with automated audio transcription. A facilitator was present during testing to prompt verbalisation of thoughts when needed, ask standard pre- and post-usability testing questions, and guide users to complete three validated quantitative instruments; System Usability Scale (SUS), Standardised User Experience Percentile Rank Question (SUPR-Q) and WebQual. Two researchers employed reflexive thematic analysis through confirming accuracy of transcriptions, immersing themselves in the recordings, and determining codes independently prior to themes being jointly agreed upon.
Results: Four themes were finalised based on generated codes; recognition of usefulness of content, factors inhibiting understanding, acceptable user experience and poor user experience. The mean SUS and SUPR-Q scores were 83.1 (SD 14.9) and 4.6 (SD 0.2) respectively, and the overall mean WebQual score was 6.1 (SD 0.2), all indicating good usability. Overall, pharmacists valued the program content and found the format visually satisfying and engaging. Subsequently, optimisation of the layout and refinement of the information and instructions were made to improve the user experience.
Conclusion: Our program appears to meet three of four POUR principles, where the education program was built to meet accessibility criteria, however robustness was not specifically tested for in this study. Process, outcome and implementation evaluation will be conducted after program rollout.