Subjects and clinical placements

Female 1: For two days I got to go to Nimbin. They have a multi-facility there where they have aged care and they have a few emergency departments, something that I've never seen before.  It was a really great experience. Everyone is just so willing to help and so much more enthusiastic

Male 1: What I like best about the program is being able to learn with other healthcare professionals and work on a case together and solve the patient's problem - all as a team.  They've got a holistic and multi-disciplinary approach to the whole thing.  They had a conference at the end and it really benefitted the patient to get all that collaborative effort to manage their pain properly. I thought that was really good.

Female 2: Being here with a Parkinson's patient and some of the changes we made in his medications, they followed him back to the hospital and he was just doing so much better the next time we saw him.  He was really grateful and it was an awesome experience.

Female 3: Here at the University Centre for Rural Health we have a six to eight week program for pharmacy students.  As part of that program they undertake placements in community pharmacies, hospital pharmacy and we organise a number of multi-disciplinary activities for them.

Male 2: Within the constraints that we've got here at the Lismore Base Hospital - as broader an introduction to hospital pharmacy as we possibly can.  Within the program, every day there's some learning objectives, so that I will try and sit down with the student at the end of the day and we will go through the previous day's learning objectives. Then at the end of their placement, we like to give the students a bit of a challenge and I try to organise for them to do a case study.  Then they'll present the work that they've done on that case study to the pharmacists at one of our weekly clinical pharmacist meetings.  So it's a good learning exercise for the students and it's a good learning exercise for us as well.

Female 2: Today we came out to a little school in Woodenbong and we gave a little presentation on healthy eating.

Female 4: After we finished our presentation we took them out and played a little game with them, which they had lots of fun doing.  Then we had a healthy lunch and a little handball that we could give them afterwards.  It was so good for us to tell all the kids about how important it is to eat healthy because hospitals and specialists are so hard to come by out here.

Female 2: It was really fun for us to be able to tell them a bit about us and what we do and tell them that they can go and see their pharmacist and I think a lot of the kids found that pretty interesting.

Female 3: The students find that rural living is fun. They find that the rural practitioners are welcoming, friendly, helpful and that they are prepared to spend a lot of time with them.

Male 3: Pharmacy students while they're here will see a number of things. Particularly what we're interested in exposing them to is dosing in the public sector. So a chance to give them a real good heads up for a day on addiction medicine I think is both beneficial for them and beneficial for us in the future.

Female 5: What we do here in Nimbin is a little bit unique and different. We approach it with a very holistic type of view.  It allows the pharmacy student to see that in a different light. So instead of just seeing it strictly as this diagnosed case, they see it as this human being and he's working with respect and trust to improve and have positive outcomes. That occurs all the time here in the NIS program.

Male 4: We are a community pharmacy and Aboriginal people are an important of our community.

Female 3: The patients are very willing to contribute to the students' learning, as are the clinicians. So the students get a wonderful learning opportunity. They get to do hands on work.  They're not just observers. They get totally engrossed and involved. They're allowed to go on home medicine review. They're allowed to interview patients at the hospital. They participate in our inter-professional learning workshop where they actually work with students who are from medicine, from nursing and from other Allied Health professions. Many students come to the Northern Rivers never having been to a rural area before.

Male 5: Coming from the city and coming here, it's a different change.  Just because there's a lack of resources and you're applying more of your knowledge. I feel that they appreciate it much more.e

Female 6: So it's really good that we're able to bring our knowledge to the table.  But then also we have students from other disciplines bringing their knowledge and we're able to learn off each other. So we're giving the patient the best care possible. I found that really beneficial, not only to my learning but also to patient care.

Male: 6: I guess we've only been touching on the surface because we've been here only a few days. But in that time so far I've met really great people, especially the students that we have to stay with. On top of that from the little hospital experience that I've had, it's that rural hospitality that's really good out here. I'm really looking forward to the rest of the time here.