This issue of GRIT is dedicated to how curiosity and passion fuel life long learning in pharmacy practice. From interactive simulation learning to the rising roles of hospital pharmacy Residents and how curricular has changed (and stayed the same) since the 60s to the 90s and today, members showed pharmacy learning is a never-ending pursuit.
The Spring issue sees members sound off on the real meaning of patient-centred care. Cutting through the noise of the cover’s pop art chatter, features dug behind the My Health Record headlines, asked ‘What makes a good death?’ and explored how connection is the key to true pharmacist collaboration between the hospital and primary care. Putting our money where our mouth(s) are, we also invited patients and hospital workers to describe what they would do to improve the healthcare journey for patients, if they were in charge of the hospital for one day.
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In Spring 2021, members explore how pharmacists, as natural 'systems thinkers', are uniquely positioned to drive change in the health care system. This issue discusses how, long accustomed to doing the most with the least in busy and cost-constrained environments, hospital pharmacists are used to navigating complex processes and hierarchies to achieve what they need for their patients.
In this issue, members explore innovation at the frontline of practice. The delivery of chemotherapy at home, improvements in transitions of care between acute and primary care, radiopharmacy, accessibility to new Hepatitis C medicines, opioid stewardship and the embedding of pharmacists in General Practice provided examples of ‘thinking outside the box – even when you have to work inside it’.
In a special Spring feature GRIT headed north, encountering remarkable pharmacists and technicians transforming their practice (and themselves) in providing culturally-appropriate care. In this spirit, the cover aims to ensure readers’ first engagement with the issue was an Indigenous perspective on health care. The resulting artwork by rising artist Lorraine Kabbindi White – granddaughter (and painting student) of the late, great Lofty Bardayal Nadjamerrek AO – unfolds continuously over the specific ochre colour of the land of her family’s country, Mankung Djang in West Arnhem Land.
Released the week before SHPA’s Medication Leadership Forum on the same topic, the Winter 2019 issue explores many facets of transitions of care, leading with the proposition that the entire medicines management pathway – from admission to, and discharge from hospital – needs to be scrutinised if we are to ensure safer transitions for hospital patients. Behind a stark hospital-home split screen, members explore other ‘transitions’, including an innovative outpatient antenatal pharmacist advice clinic supporting the transition into motherhood, and the advent of immunotherapies, which represent an enormous transition toward less harmful treatments.
By Winter, COVID-19 in Australia has a steady but uncertain rhythm and is embedded in our everyday collective consciousness. The cover’s coffee table spread shows this new reality, as features explored business as (un)usual on two concurrent paths: one focused on daily case counts, new clinical information on coronavirus and the ongoing battle to identify, contain and suppress outbreaks, and the other addressing other issues and opportunities in hospital pharmacy that remained just as relevant as they were before the pandemic shadow arose.
The blood-red of the Spring 2020 issue brings together the person and the practice; blending pharmacy (medicine) and the pharmacist (fingerprint) as a reminder that the human experience is intrinsic to the function of the profession, and the delivery of patient care. As life amid COVID-19 continues, members explore the vulnerability of frontline healthcare workers under strain, and the benefits of mindfulness in pharmacy practice.
