Anna Barwick

I’m a registered pharmacist with 10 years’ experience in community, hospital and aged care. I’m currently a part-time academic at the University of New England and working as a consultant. I’m also an entrepreneur and a founder – I have a company called PharmOnline, which is the first pharmacist-led telehealth service in Australia. 

I’m passionate about having an impact on people – being able to positively influence their health outcomes is always an absolute joy. Equipping and encouraging people to be able to advocate for themselves in the health system is an important legacy that I want to leave behind.  

I live in a rural area in northern New South Wales that has quite a high rate of diabetes diagnoses and poor outcomes, but there are no local diabetes educators at all. I know a couple of pharmacist credentialed diabetes educators (CDEs) that I think very highly of and seeing what they do, I think the graduate certificate will be a wonderful qualification to have in my repertoire.  I want to be able to use it to help my community.

I’ve got lots of colleagues who have done this course, so it came really highly recommended, and UTS was financially quite competitive, which was important to me. I also love that the course is self-paced. When you’re working full time, you’ve got a family and other caring responsibilities, you have to fit your studies in around everything else. Being able to come back to it and work on it when I can is really valuable.

I’m the ultimate lifelong learner – I don’t think I’ve stopped studying since I graduated from university! In the graduate certificate, I really enjoy the interaction with the other students – there are lots of discussion boards where people can share their experiences. The guest lecturers from a range of health professions who are also CDEs have been great too – we’ve heard from podiatrists, nurse CDEs and other pharmacist CDEs.

My goal is to offer a diabetes clinic in town, giving local residents the opportunity to access that health care without having to travel long distances. My diabetes mentor works in schools teaching children about healthy lifestyles and the symptoms of diabetes. I’d love to do that too. 

Combining postgrad study with work and life is a juggle, but there are lots of supports available. The teaching staff have been fantastic – particularly during COVID, they’ve been very aware that we’re overburdened and overstressed and they’ve tried to reduce the pressure on us as much as possible. My advice to other students would be to reach out and ask for help early and really try to immerse yourself in the learning process. As a health professional, you can’t ever stop learning, because the evidence is changing all the time.

Learn more about studying Diabetes Education and Management at UTS.