Goondiwindi’s Lucy Walker has been announced as one of 19 Queensland recipients, and one of only two from rural Queensland, of a prestigious Churchill Fellowship in 2018, worth some $3.1 million collectively.
Pitching the idea of bringing innovative global pharmacy practices to her rural community and improve services nationally, the pharmacist and local business owner said she was excited and honoured to be a recipient.
“We do wonderful services out here in Goondiwindi and we're very much part of the healthcare team, but pharmacists in other parts of the world actually provide more services to their community, so I really just wanted to see what other places do and see whether we could start doing those services here in Gundy as well,” she said.
“Recently pharmacists (in Australia) started doing vaccinations for the flu, but in Ireland this has been happening for 10 or 15 years and they do a whole spectrum of different vaccinations, so I wanted to explore how we could make those systems and processes happen here in Queensland and throughout Australia.
“It's harder to get in and see our doctors and we don't want to clog up our little hospital with non-emergencies, so anything we can do to take the pressure off our healthcare system so that it's available for those people who need it, it will help really.”
