'There's an industry shortage': Local chemist unable to find pharmacist shuts its doors

Chemist Outlet opened the doors of their Dubbo store in 2006, but its future is uncertain with a nationwide shortage of pharmacists making it hard to fill vacancies in regional pharmacies.

"It's not just Dubbo, there's actually an industry shortage of pharmacists at the moment so trying to find one that can permanently work at the Dubbo store has proven very difficult," said Nikki Goodger, who works in Human Resources for Chempro - the company that owns Chemist Outlet.

"We targeted everywhere for someone - being a pharmacy, the last thing you ever want to do is not be able to open the store, but legally we can't run the store without a pharmacist."

Ms Goodger said the company has cast a wide net when searching for a pharmacist - advertising on all the job websites they could and through a number of recruitment agencies - but have been unable to find a pharmacist to work in the store full time.

She said the extra pressure put on pharmacists over the past few years during the COVID-19 pandemic had led to burn out and driven a lot of workers away from the industry - making the pool of qualified staff smaller.

"This has been going on for about a year but it's become really apparent over the last six months. There's so many jobs going at the moment, employees have the choice where they want to go," she said.

"It never used to be like that. It used to be that we would put up a job ad and get up to 100 applicants - good applicants - and now we're lucky to get one... if that."

Pharmacy isn't the only part of Dubbo's healthcare ecosystem struggling to retain and recruit staff at the moment. There is also a shortage of nurses, GPs and paramedics in the area leading to what has been described as a "healthcare crisis".

"A lot of people have left the industry because a lot of pressure has been put on pharmacies - when pharmacies were providing COVID vaccines for everyone it put a lot of strain on pharmacists. We were inundated," she said.

"And like hospitals, we were one of the only industries that stayed open through the whole pandemic. It's a high pressure job."

All the staff who were working at Chemist Outlet have been temporarily reallocated to Bowen's Pharmacy on Wingewarra Street in Dubbo.

Ms Goodger said Bowen's Pharmacy would also be looking after patients who regularly had their scripts filled at Chemist Outlet.

Until Chemist Outlet can reopen, customers should contact Bowen's Pharmacy for advice on their scripts.

"We're hoping to reopen the store as soon as we can. If we could have it open tomorrow with someone we would," she said.

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content: