Survey on Diversity of Pharmacists' Job Roles, Duties and Skills, and Leveraging Postgraduate Skills in Public Healthcare Institutions

Dr Tan Wu Meng asked the Minister for Health (a) whether a strategic survey has been conducted to assess the diversity of job roles, duties and skills within the pharmacist professional community and if not already done so, whether this will be done; and (b) whether the public healthcare institutions consider potential new roles and contributions when a pharmacist is sponsored for a postgraduate degree and how the subsequent deployments can leverage on the new skills.

The Ministry of Health (MOH) conducts regular engagements through surveys, workshops, focus group discussions and international experts' consultations to evaluate the diversity of job roles, duties and skills for pharmacists. Such engagements have contributed to greater clarity of the breadth of pharmacist competencies across different domains. For example, the Development Framework for Pharmacists (DFP) published in May 2020, set out four levels of pharmacy competencies in the domains of professional practice, education, research and evaluation, as well as leadership and management.

The public healthcare institutions identify appropriate local and overseas training programmes and skills attachments and sponsor pharmacists to undertake such training, to prepare them to take on specific higher-level roles. This could take the form of enhanced clinical roles, such as those in antimicrobial stewardship programmes, medication therapy management clinics or anti-coagulation clinics; specialist clinical roles in areas, such as Oncology, Critical Care and Geriatrics; as well as general management and leadership roles within the institution.