Amanda Lawson

Where did you complete your undergraduate degree?

University of NSW in 2010 - BSc (Pharmacology and Biotechnology)
 

Why did you choose UTS?

I attended an information evening and was really impressed by the new facilities and the fresh approach to teaching an old profession and how they promised to prepare us to enter a new era of pharmacy. I was also impressed that this would be an "innovative" and "practice oriented" degree that would prepare us to be not only good community pharmacists but would also prepare us to be good industry based professional or hospital pharmacist and could prepare us for whatever field we choose to enter. This particularly interested me as I have always been interested in entering the pharmaceutical industry and many other degrees don't prepare pharmacists for this kind of role.

 

Community Pharmacy Placement

I have really enjoyed clinical placement so far and have had two really amazing preceptors who have always gone above and beyond what was expected of them to teach me things that will prepare not only for my board exam but also for the day to day things in the pharmacy that you can only learn "on the job". I felt really warmly accepted by all the staff at the pharmacy and have learnt a great deal from the assistants there also. I have performed all sorts of tasks since being at this pharmacy including dispensing, counselling, stocking shelves, research, liaised with other professionals and have been involved in quite a bit of compounding also.

I have been offered a job with my clinical placement pharmacy but am not working there currently due to time constraints and the fact that I have another job in pharmacy currently. 

 

Deloitte UTS Summer Placement Program

I'm really excited about this opportunity. We had someone from Deloitte come on campus to lecture on the e-health initiative being rolled out by the federal government and talk about the summer vacation placement position open to one UTS pharmacy student.  I am really looking forward to this placement as it is an opportunity to experience an aspect of the health industry that I would never have thought of previously as a prospective career option related to my pharmacy degree. They have worked on some really exciting projects recently including and analysis for the government to determine whether pharmacogenomic testing would be financially beneficial by reducing healthcare costs. Another project they worked on was for a large pharmaceutical company who were planning to bring out a biopharmaceutical drug to Australia, they performed a risk analysis and recommended potential marketing schemes that would be appropriate.