PHARMACY owners' confidence in the future viability of the profession is on the rise, the 2018 University of Technology Sydney (UTS) Pharmacy Barometer reveals.
Speaking at the launch of the Barometer yesterday, UTS Head of Pharmacy, Professor Kylie Williams said sentiment in the profession was "overwhelmingly neutral", but owners appeared to be more confident about the future than their employees.
The Barometer found more than a third of pharmacy owners reported they were optimistic, while a further 61% said they were "neutral" in their expectations for the future.
"Owners are much more positive than either the managers (20.9%) or the employee pharmacists (22.1%)," Professor Williams said.
"Interestingly the managers (9.1%) are almost twice as pessimistic than either the employee pharmacists (5.5%) or the owners (4.8%)."
Barometer expert panel member and CEO of Montrose Pharma, Adjunct Professor John Montgomery, suggested pharmacy managers' negative sentiment (9.1%) reflected "the burden of management of change".
UTS Pharmacy School, National Academic Advisory Committee member, Brendan O'Loughlin, added "there's a lot of stress that gets passed to managers," which may influence their pessimism about the future.
"Cost cutting and management of price disclosure falls to that level," O'Loughlin said.
The Barometer's overall reading of 99/200 reflected a neutral sentiment across the profession, however, former Pharmaceutical Society of Australia President, Warwick Plunkett said it showed a movement towards a positive outlook for pharmacy.
"I would see those figures as showing a trend of slightly more optimism than pessimism in terms of the future," he said.
"We're moving out of that [negative sentiment] and that's probably reflective that we're coming towards the end of the Sixth Community Pharmacy Agreement (6CPA), [and] the 6CPA has done well for pharmacy compared to what they thought was going to happen five years ago, and it's reflected in this, but there's still uncertainty of what's going to happen in the 7CPA and beyond."
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