Advocacy and impact

SHPA plays a valuable role advocating for pharmacists and technicicans working in hospitals and other healthcare settings in order to achieve positive health outcomes for the community.

Managing medicines remains a substantial challenge for contemporary society. Even as community expectations of health and medical treatments grow, the mismanagement of medicine contributes to life-shortening outcomes for vulnerable populations, demonstrated by the 230,000 medication-related hospital admissions each year.

With almost half of Australians experiencing a chronic health condition often requiring regular medicine use, a consensus is growing around the benefit of greater access for patients to professional pharmacy services and a recognition of the valuable role played by pharmacists as key members of the multi-disciplinary healthcare team.

SHPA is advocating to ensure pharmacists in hospitals and other healthcare settings are appropriately utilised in this dynamic new healthcare landscape.

To achieve this objective, SHPA actively seeks to increase understanding by governments and the wider community of the range, complexity and value of the work of members. SHPA also provides expert clinical advice to health and medical stakeholders on pharmacy matters and keeps members informed of the advocacy and representation undertaken on their behalf. Health policy and clinical services submissions made by SHPA are available on this website.

These activities are reported regularly to members via this website and our weekly eNews. In addition, SHPA makes regular media statements to openly report on the progress of key programs and initiatives, to promote concepts and initiatives that support the profession and to counter misinformation and proposals that may have a negative impact on the Society and the well-being of its members. Join the SHPA media release mailing list. 

For more information about SHPA’s advocacy, pharmacy policy or stakeholder engagement contact Jerry Yik, Head of Policy and Advocacy.

Accredited Pharmacists

As one of two national accrediting bodies, SHPA is committed to recognising and supporting the unique expertise of Accredited Pharmacists, and the crucial role they play upholding quality use of medicines and medication safety for patients who are at risk of medication-related harm and hospitalisation.

In this spirit, we extend an invitation to all accredited pharmacists to join SHPA, through which we will recognise your existing accreditation and confer the postnominal ‘AcSHP’.

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Guiding Australia's national response to COVID-19 

In mid-April 2020, SHPA undertook a series of surveys of hospital access to medicines and the hospital pharmacy workforce in order to ensure the Federal Government had a good understanding of the system’s capacity during the COVID-19 pandemic, and to complement other information gathering activities. 

COVID-19 Hospital Pharmacy Capacity 2020 Snapshot results and analyses are available to members only, for:

  • Survey #1, Friday 17 April 
  • Survey #2, Friday 24 April 
  • Survey #3, Friday 1 May 
  • Survey #4, Friday 8 May 
  • Survey #5 and final report, May 2020

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