Newsroom interviews... Andi Shirtcliffe - the nation's former clinical chief advisor for pharmacy

Q. What is your first memory of a pharmacist?

A. Spending my early years in Lower Hutt I remember going to the local shops with my mother. There weren’t any supermarkets in New Zealand back then so we would go to the fruit and vege store, the butcher and the pharmacy. This was in Naenae and it is where I ended up doing my internship. That was such a great experience where I got to try my hand at everything and learn so much about what it means to be anchored into and trusted by a local high needs community. The pharmacists there were so well known and integral to the health and well-being of their local people.

Q. Why did you become a pharmacist?

A. I was interested in sciences but didn’t want to spend my time in a lab and pharmacy seemed to be a great combination of sciences and helping people. I’ll confess I didn’t really have much understanding of what being a pharmacist meant. The role of pharmacists has continually evolved through my whole career so keeping up to speed with what being a pharmacist is has made for a really interesting career.

Q. Where did you train?

A. My undergraduate training and both of my pharmacy post graduate qualifications (Certificate in Pharmacy and Diploma in Clinical Pharmacy) are from Otago. Since then I’ve completed a Micro-credential in medicines optimisation in the elderly through Auckland University and undertaken a miscellany of papers from overseas Universities e.g. complex projects at Oxford, organisational analysis at Stanford and a brief dip into health economics at London School of Economics. The opening up of the on-line learning world has been so exciting.

Q. Do you have any advice for people considering becoming pharmacists or pharmacy technicians?

A. Now is a fascinating time to get involved in pharmacy – pharmacists and technicians are undertaking a wider role than ever before in the health of our communities and this will continue to grow. The changes that are envisaged across the legislative and commissioning work program are going to see incredible opportunities for the public to benefit from the pharmacy team expertise. If someone was thinking about this as a career I would advise that they go and spend some time with some of our leading edge practitioners and see what an exciting and motivating role it can be.

Q. Do you have any particular highlights from your time as a pharmacist that you can share?

A. The opportunity to support a leadership award at the Otago School of Pharmacy is a particular highlight. I’m deeply committed to the concept of servant leadership and wanted to foster this as an important concept in the minds of our young leaders. The award focuses on acknowledging those who seek to lead by sharing power and supporting those around them to develop, grow and focuses on well-being and empowerment.

Q. What are your top three facts about pharmacy that the public don’t know, but should?

A. Being a pharmacist is not just about counting tablets there’s so much more to what we do and what we can do.

Pharmacists know a lot about how the health system works and can really help people navigate to help themselves.

Pharmacists are that last important check as to whether that medicine is the right thing for you, and at the right dose and doesn’t interact with your other medicines.

Q. Is it right that you did a Fullbright Scholarship? Where did you do it and what were the highlights of your study?

A. I was awarded a Science and Innovation Fulbright Scholarship in 2022, headed off to the States in 2023 but sadly I got ill and had to return home. I’ve been very fortunate to have both the Fulbright Scholarship and the University scholarships re-awarded and I’m heading off to have another go in June. The placement is with Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Public Health School (Baltimore) who have awarded me two further scholarships. I plan to complete a Masters in Public Health in Implementation Science. My particular area of interest is the intersect between implementation science and central government policy and how we set the system up to be a learning system and implement policy in a way that is equitable and culturally meaningful for local populations.

Q. What was it like being part of the rollout of the COVID 19 vaccination programme?

A. It was both terrifying and exciting – I don’t think I’ve ever been so busy in my life and I’ve had some busy roles over my career. Things seemed to go at a million miles an hour and I really felt for my colleagues out in community and hospital pharmacy. We tried our best to get information out to them as early as we could but I fear that often it didn’t look like that from the outside. It was certainly a time of late nights every night and working all weekend for months on end – but pharmacists were so important to our response that it was an honour to do what I could do to contribute.

Q. We understand you are the first person to take up the chief advisor pharmacy role and you’ve held it since 2013? What’s involved with this work and what are your top three achievements during your time at the Ministry?

A. When I started in this role it was much more operational than it is now. It was certainly functioning at a national level but quite operational. With time we have evolved the role to be much more cross sector, cross government and much more strategic. And I’ve certainly focused my CPD to develop skill growth in areas to support this. Much of the work is with a longer-term vision and is ‘behind the scenes’ so it is hard to speak to specific pieces of work. Recent examples of work that I’ve been involved with have been leading the clinical advice on the Ministry review of Health New Zealand’s health plan and providing clinical advice into the TPB mahi. I think I’m most proud of the mahi that I did to support the pharmacy role in covid vaccinations and covid anti-viral therapeutics, and the pharmacy role in vaccination service provision in general.

Q. Do you see AI as having a wider role to play in pharmacy? What would that look like?

A.AI will have a wider role in all healthcare so there is no reason to believe that it won’t have a significant impact in pharmacy. It’s an area that pharmacists and their teams should prioritise for their CPD. I think the key things are to understand what AI is, where it is, what it’s doing and how it is impacting on the resources and tools that pharmacists and their teams use to inform their roles. However I see huge potential to make care more efficient and accurate – I don’t think AI will make pharmacy roles obsolete, but it will make those who don’t understand and use AI obsolete.

Q. What sort of future do you envisage pharmacy in Aotearoa as having?

A. Times are tough for everyone in health right now, and pharmacy is no exception. However I think that the future is positive. We have seen so much shift in understanding of the value add of the pharmacy profession and their teams. I see pharmacy across all parts of healthcare stepping up and out to the full breadth of their scopes. In integrated and collaborative teams that value the medicines optimisation skillset. There’s so much potential on the horizon I don’t know which opportunity excites me the most.