Page 26 - Tropic Magazine Issue 32

TROPIC • WORK & STUDY

Career

prescription

VOCATION
A shortage of community
pharmacists, particularly in
rural and regional areas, is
making an already attractive
career prospect even more
enticing.
“It is a very secure career, there is a
Words: Renee Cluff
need for pharmacists,” she said.
For Ruth Nona Renshaw, a degree in “At this point in time, you can walk out
pharmacy she obtained in the United of uni and get a job. Cairns Hospital is
Kingdom has taken her across the world. becoming a university hospital so there
Ruth practiced in England for the first will be even more pharmacists needed
few years of her working life before there in the near future.”
relocating to Australia and ultimately, Far Students no longer need to leave
North Queensland. At first, she worked Cairns to study pharmacy.
in Cooktown and other remote Cape James Cook University’s (JCU)
York communities before making the Smithfield Campus this year took its
move to Cairns, where she now manages first cohort of pharmacy students and
an Alive Pharmacy. Ruth has no regrets is planning to expand the course. Ruth Nona Renshaw
about the profession she picked, telling It’s hoped the graduates will help fill
Tropic her 20-odd years in the field has led the shortage of pharmacists in the
to experiences, job satisfaction and job region, who are paid more than their
security she’d never anticipated. city counterparts.

Pick a path
There are many career opportunities a pharmacy degree lends itself to.

Hospitals Community pharmacies Drug companies Some prisons

GP practices Training and academia Medicare Compounding facilities*

Research labs Non-government organisations Defence force

*A specialist field in which medication prescribed by a doctor is made for patients that
can’t use a commercially manufactured medication. They can be found in some community pharmacies.

26 • Tropic • Issue 32