Welcome to this special recap of Your Pharmacy Career podcast, proudly produced by Raven’s Recruitment - Australia’s experts in pharmacy career and locum services for over 30 years.
When Karalyn Huxhagen first dipped her toes into pharmacy, she couldn't have known the profound impact she would have across rural Australia. It was a journey marked by resilience, tough lessons, and pioneering achievements that continue to inspire the next generation of pharmacists. In this episode of Your Pharmacy Career Podcast, hosted by Krysti-Lee Patterson, Karalyn takes listeners through a heartfelt exploration of her career, touching on topics such as education, rural health advocacy, and mental health support.
Episode Summary
Karalyn Huxhagen, an award-winning community and consultant pharmacist, shares her remarkable journey through pharmacy—from a chance opportunity shaped by early work experience to becoming a stalwart advocate for rural health care and Indigenous community wellbeing. Karalyn discusses the evolution of pharmacy over decades, the ongoing challenges in remote areas, mental health advocacy, and her unique pathway balancing family life, career advancement, and professional activism. Her commitment to innovation, education, and fighting for the voice of rural communities shines brightly throughout the conversation.
Key Takeaways from the Episode
Early experiences shape lifelong careers: Karalyn's career started with a work experience placement that led to life-long passion in pharmacy.
Facing challenges head-on: Early gender biases in rural pharmacy motivated Karalyn to excel and advocate for equity.
Rural and remote pharmacy realities: Transport delays, limited stock access, and cultural sensitivity needs demand adaptability and creativity.
Mental health matters: Karalyn stresses the importance of mental health first aid training for all healthcare workers, particularly pharmacists.
Cultural competence is critical: Especially when working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities where ageing in place is vital.
Flexibility is essential: Karalyn’s career diversified over time, embracing consultancy, education, advocacy, and community service.
Advocacy leads to systemic change: Through committees and government consultations, rural voices have gained greater recognition.
Embrace technology: COVID-19 has proven that effective remote participation and symposiums are here to stay.
Self-care and sustainability: Karalyn reminds pharmacists not to become slaves to their jobs—setting boundaries is key to a sustainable career.
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Full Episode Transcript
Welcome to Your Pharmacy Career podcast, proudly produced by Raven's Recruitment, the experts in pharmacy career and locum services for over 30 years.
Every episode is your gateway. To new opportunities in the pharmacy profession, from expert advice to inspiring success stories.
We're here to spark ideas, guide your career and help you achieve your goals.
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The next step in your pharmacy journey starts here.
Hi, everyone, and welcome to Your Pharmacy Career podcast.
I'm your host, Krysti-Lee Patterson, and I'm so excited to have you with us today.
Today we have a truly incredible guest, Karalyn Huxhagen.
Karalyn is a highly experienced community and consultant pharmacist with a strong focus on rural and regional health care.
She is also an Australian pharmacist of the Year, an expert in immunisation, pain management, aged care, and mental health, and is a strong, passionate advocate for indigenous and culturally diverse health care.
Not only that, she's also a tutor at James Cook University and the University of Sydney as well as a respective writer and educator in the field, I should say.
Karalyn, welcome to the podcast.
It's a pleasure to have you here.
Thank you, Krysti-Lee.
So let's start at the beginning.
Karalyn, I always ask everyone this question in the beginning of the podcast and it's really just about what initially attracted you to becoming a pharmacist.
Okay, so when I was in school, they had introduced what was called work experience, and I was lucky in enough to undertake work experience with a really great pharmacist.
He was young, business owner, and he was really passionate about pharmacy, so I was really lucky to spend that time with him.
Then I actually applied to go nursing and was accepted to go nursing.
And the matron where I was going nursing said to me, Karalyn, I really don't you're going to make it, not because of your brain, but because of your physical size.
I was six and a stone.
I was really slight.
And she said, you will find the heavy lifting of nursing hard work because your body's not really designed for how much work we do.
And she was really quite adamant that I wouldn't make it.
And so my parents said, look, give pharmacy a go for a year.
And if you hate it, you know, we'll look at something else down the track.
And that was the beginning of my career.
It was tough.
I'd never lived away that far away from home.
And, you know, it wasn't easy to come home.
So I spent a lot of my learning years living in Brisbane.
And yeah, so that was the beginning.
I can kind of early relate a little bit to you looking into going to nursing, when I did work experience, I was very much thinking about nursing or surgery and that type of thing.
And I am only a small person myself.
So I definitely think we most probably would have been able to put up with it.
But yeah, I think that is probably a good advice to make you think about actually like the longevity of what you're actually going to be doing, because it's definitely something that I wouldn't have actually considered.
No.
In pharmacy, like community pharmacy, you stand for long periods of time, you know, and even in hospital, when I worked in private hospital, I was still , I didn't, they never gave me awardsman, so I was still carrying all the boxes of IV fluids and things.
And I'm thinking, what is different about this too, if I'd been the nurse?
But yeah, so, yeah, but pharmacy ended up being my career.
And I was really lucky when I left university, I was going back to Longreach, where I had been accepted to do my intern year.
And for a variety of reasons that all fell through .
And so I had to click my wounds and move back home. And there was no work for female pharmacists when I moved back home.
Like nobody was employing females.
You know, they don't stay, they don't stay in the workforce a thousand reasons.
It was the beginning of the change from pharmacy being dominated by males.
Anyway, I had all very dominant male bosses wherever I went.
And I was really lucky because one of my classmates, he was supposed to take this job up in Mackay and he didn't turn up.
He just didn't arrive.
And I happened to walk in the day that they were going, oh, who is us, because the guy that owned the pharmacy, he had planned a succession plan to get out of being a pharmacist in that pharmacy and he had like a two, three year succession plan and he needed me to need that person to do their intern years so he could walk out and leave it under somebody else's control.
So he said to me, he said, can you change your tire in a car ?
Can you use a screwdriver?
And like it was a all these things, you know, can you do all these physical things?
And I said, oh, yeah, I'm a girl guide.
I can do all those sort of things.
And and that he said, good, okay, you're hired.
And it was just the weirdest interviewer out there.
It was nothing about pharmacy .
And then for a major part of my intern year, he did not allow me into the dispensary.
He made me learn furnterop oil ordering.
He'd made me learn how to do the rosters, how to control staff, how to deal with burglaries and everything else.
And it was a group of pharmacies.
So they had three community pharmacies and then a private hospital business.
It was a pharmacy where his own pharmacy did a lot of vet work.
So I was doing work for horses and greyhounds and chickens.
And then we had a big business where we were supplying to mine sites, lighthouses, shipping, all of that kind of thing.
And then we had the private hospital business.
And so I had three bosses, four different areas to working in each day.
And it was just the best role to learn pharmacy in because it was just an amazing array of different things.
And the one thing that when I was, you asked me to do this, and I looked back and I thought, you know what I like best about that place?
There was no DAA packs and there was no checking Webster's.
And I went, I've forgotten how much that was not in my role description.
And yeah, but it was really a great learning platform because we just did everything.
We did it.
We had our own extent products that we used to make.
So you learned such a variety.
Yeah, so they were they were quite interesting days.
Yeah, well, I just, I think I'm in shock over your interview.
I still haven't recovered from that.
That's very interesting, but I'm also not surprised as well..
It was a very different time and that would have seemed normal back then.
Yeah, this is the early 80s.
So we hadn't come into the madness that came then with all the changes in PBS and things.
You know, it was when pharmacies were very much a huge part of the community and we did so much work.
And yeah, like when I first started, we still had a delivery boy on a bicycle with a box, you know, it was.
Yeah, because it was a small country town and it was just, yeah, everything was, these guys had been running these businesses for years and they were coming to the end of their working life.
So they were still really old school.
And, yeah, I was the whipper snipper that came in and tried to sort of bridge the gap to what was going to happen next.
Yep, that would have been quite challenging.
I guess you would have been quite young and, yeah.
Yeah.
It was funny because we had a guy on staff that sold the cameras and the telescopes and all of those things.
And he wasn't a pharmacist.
He was a camera boy.
And anyway, I was so young and because I was so tiny and thin, yeah, people had asked to see the pharmacist and I'd go out and they'd go, no, no, the pharmacist, pharmacist.
And so, yeah, I'd get George to go out and he'd ask all the questions and then he'd come back around to the back and ask me, you know, it was really strange because it took quite some time for the regulars to actually accept that I was the pharmacist.
Because, you know, it had been a male dominated industry for so long.
There was just every pharmacy in town, apart from one in all the little towns around us even, was owned by a male.
So it was sort of different.
And yeah, but he used to, he was a real carriage.
He'd come out the back and go, you're going to have to look at this one.
I'm not looking at that rash.
It was funny.
Oh, that's so good.
I think while we're chatting about your experiences in that a rural setting and the early days, I guess I grew up in an a rural area, so I understand some of the challenges.
And so even when you talk about when people ask you to speak to the pharmacist and they're like, oh, the other pharmacist, I've also experienced that when myself.
It's like, oh, can I, I had someone say, can I speak to the real pharmacist?
I'm like, oh, yes, I'm just the pretend one.
And then they realised what they said and we both laughed about it and it was all okay, but it so I think you do have to, I don't know if it is anyone listening that maybe might have experienced that try not to take it too personally.
It's, I know for me it was it was in the smaller country towns where the clientele were a lot older than me, so that was just what they were they were used to.
And so it wasn't an intentional thing, but yes, it was quite funny.
Sometimes it was this, yeah, we' joke around with them and say, I am just here on work experience.
Yeah, it's my latest in turn is quite a tiny person too.
And, yeah, she struggled a few times with them going, have you and they go, you know, have you really finished school and, you, they make comments and she goes, yeah, I'm actually a real pharmacist. .
I try and see it as a positive, and it's like, well, you know what?
Well, as you get older, hopefully you still look young. Says that would be nice.
We're working in regional and rural pharmacy settings.
What are some of the other challenges that people maybe don't think about or maybe don't talk about openly?
And maybe you can share some of the things that you've experienced personally and especially even part of your career, you've done some advocacy work.
And it's really important that rural and remote and regional pharmacists or even just people in those communities, have someone representing them, but that can be extremely difficult when a lot of things are always in the city.
Yeah.
And over the years, it's been, as things have been changing, it's been, yeah, you know, like I chaired the rural remote workforce Development Program, which was a guild program for some time and was very involved in National Rural Health Alliance and, you know, a sound committees with the Real Health Minister and things like that for quite some time, because you had to have a voice that was truly working and living in the area .
And there were many things that they just didn't get, you know, the tyranny of distance, the fact that if your stock didn't come today, well, it could be three days before it did come.
And just, you know, discharging patients home to a rural community where to get chemo and anything that's above amoxycillin and paracetamol is hard work.
And many, many times, you know, you are meeting airplanes or the greyhound bus to try and get stopped from somewhere for people who been discharged from their metropolitan Hospital and on drugs that you just don't have.
And in my aged care work, you look at, these residents don't want to leave their community because there's their family and all the people they grew up with.
So they really want to be ageing in place.
And it's taken government a long time to realise that ageing in place is really important culturally to not just to us as white Caucasians, but also to people like the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and the South Seas, because ageing in place for an Aboriginal person is absolutely important for their mental health.
You know, they want to live on country, they want to die on country, and to tell them that they have to move to Rockhampton or to Gladstone, to go into a unit system or whatever, that's not their country and that affects their healing mentally.
It affects them not being able to see their families.
And so I had a strong role in trying to get bureaucrats, people who lived in towers of ivory, to understand what it was like.
And then we then decided when we were starting to identify that pharmacy was going to have some severe workforce issues, and this probably came about the early 90s, that we started to realise that it was going to hit workforce issues. And we started to develop rural schools or pharmacy.
And so then, you know, then you had the problem where mums would ring you up and say, hey, my child's got been accepted into Charles Darwin or to JCU.
You know, will their degree be recognised?
You know, is it good enough?
And there was terrible social type media and it is not as bad as Facebook now, but there was terrible sort of comments out there that said, you know, oh, your JCU degree won't be recognised.
You know, you'll never get a job.
And then when QUT started, it was the same.
And, you know, you had to talk parents down to say, you know, please let them do pharmacy.
They will be needed and they will be wanted and there will be ready recognised.
And so being involved in programs like rural remote workforce was about, it was such a diverse area.
So we were looking at making sure the pharmacy workforce was going to be there.
And that included pharmacy assistance and pharmacies.
But we were also looking at how we fixed all the other programs.
So a program that sat under the community pharmacy agreement that could be rolled out easily in a metropolitan or a city had to be able to be deliverable in, you know, Gundagai or whatever.
So, you know, if the program needed two pharmacists and tech to deliver it, couldn't do that if you were sitting in a little town like Alpha or, you know, it's just the economies of scale are different.
And that fight's still going on, like, you know, when immunisation came out and the rules said you had to have two pharmacists on duty.
Well, yeah, that's a luxury in some most pharmacies now, but it's definitely a luxury if you're living in rural and remote.
And so, you know, and like for Collinsville, when we started immunising up there, we would immunise from seven to eight in the morning and then open the pharmacy.
You had to do things to get around it.
And it was, yeah, but it's been a lifetime of fighting for having a voice to say, please think about the rest of Australia.
It's not all about Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra.
And programs need to have a voice.
And when the remote programs were happening, we always tried to have a consumer voice on on those committees who was living with a chronic disease, you know, in places like the Northern Territory.
And we were very diligent for all of our committees and that to try and have a consumer voice to bring them back so that we were delivering what could work.
Yeah, and it's, yeah, it's taken time, but, you know, we've still got lots of problems about, you know, even the current agreement running some of the programs efficiently and effectively in Rural remote Australia is hard.
It's not, you know, we don't have the workforce to do it.
No, that that's so true.
And you're right.
It's more than just workforces as well.
And when you're talking about the Indigenous community when they can't just get up and leave.
And I think if you're used to working in a city or even if you don't have a strong connection to whatever the culture you are, just moving around just seems quite normal.
Like, oh, okay, well, just move.
It's not too much of a big deal.
But especially Indigenous people, like you said, they connected to Hubat country and it's it's a part of them.
And I think, like for me, that's taken a really long time to understand.
Like I like, because I just can't relate to that.
I've moved around a lot.
I love moving around and try seeing new things so I don't really, and people ask me, where do you come from?
I I, oh, I don't know.
I say muchudi because that's where I spent most of my time.
And when you mentioned about trying to get the bureaucrats to actually come out to where these communities live, I think that's really important to actually see it and not just a photo op either.
The thing that really changed my understanding was when I did a, I think it was a six or eight week placement in Western Australia in Geraldton and then we spent some time in an Aboriginal community in Mount Magnet and just little things that made me think differently was just like if we were a doctor or a pharmacist saying to them, oh, you need to change your diet and you need to eat healthily .
They actually couldn't because the shops around them, the only fresh fruit vegetable were in this Mount Magnet community was just at the service station.
It was like a couple of limp bananas.
And yeah, I just thought it was so sad because I'm like, oh, even like things that we get taught at university or about these are the good things, but we have to think of that in context of the person as well. Say to someone, oh, yeah, just, you need to incorporate more more fruits and veggies.
And then, yeah, they walked just around the community and yeah, we're like, oh, where do people buy their groceries from?
They're like, they don't this is all they have here.
Yeah.
So that really stuck out to me.
Yeah.
I don't know why the fruit did, but that was just the main thing.
I just thought, what?
They can't even get fresh fruit.
Yeah, many of the Aboriginal communities are the same.
Like I do was doing home medication reviews for Wabinda and yeah, there's AU can only use cash.
There's It's a cardless society.
But yeah, the groceries were definitely limited and very, very limited.
Yeah.
And it's just, everything is different and you have to sort of take a really big step backward as to it.
But yeah, but then there were some really great things.
Like the dialysis unit, I would have to go and check on them each day.
And the guys that were on dialysis, they were just so switched on, they knew how to run that unit far better than I did.
They'd link themselves in the machines and take themselves off.
And I'd go, yeah, you guys, you know, Queensland House should employ to teach all the other Aboriginal people how easy it is to do dialysis.
And, you know, but the thing that really worked for us with the dialysis unit was when they came in, they got fed, they got looked after, and, you know, they did everything.
So you can do little things to help, but in the bigger picture as a pharmacist, you're just a tiny part of the of the plan and you've got to all work together.
So when you work on an Aboriginal land, it's everybody has to be really trained in the cultural significance of everything you do.
And yeah, sometimes it's very confronting and and different.
And so, but it's amazing sometimes what you uncover and fix and you go, I've had a win today, you know, like I have, you know, told this person how to use their ventil and they're actually doing it right as I leave.
So, yeah, like, you know, you go to a house and they've got a bag full of 20 empty celbuttimole inhalers and you think, oh my God.
What's happening?
Yeah, but .
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I definitely, definitely agree with you.
And so if there's anyone listening that hasn't experienced rural, there's plenty of locum rules out there, but people on more than happy for you to even just go and do it for like a couple of weeks or something like that's better than nothing and I think you'll end up having a really good experience.
I still try to do do short stints to locuming, especially in far North Queensland.
And, yeah, the community is different, but I love it.
Its people are also very grateful as well, I think.
So even sometimes the little things that it's just a common practice.
I remember.
There was one patient, I helped them with their little baby and just by offering them Panadol, but they were just so grateful because they didn't know they'd been out bush. And I didn't know what that meant for all these people coming in and say, oh yeah, I've been out bush.
I'm like, what's that mean?
And yeah, so, but yeah, just seeing how grateful they are that you give them, I guess, that time to kind of understand what's going on is really valuable.
One thing I think, though, that's we should probably should touch on is very relevant to you as well, is, is mental health in rural regional areas.
I know that you've done your mental health, first aid certificate.
If you ask me, I think that should be mandatory, like a first a certificate, but not just for pharmacist, but all stuff.
I don't know what your thoughts are on that, but yeah, what do you think the role of pharmacists could be in identifying and supporting people with mental health?
Yeah, like I did my mental health first days to be right back when that first came in. Because in my opinion, a basic psychology, you know, two subjects of psychology should be in first year, in my opinion, because the people that walk into the pharmacy are unwell for one or, you know, many, one or many reasons, but the amount of people that come in and then one simple question can unravel off a whole heap of other problems, you know, not being able to afford the medicine for their children then becomes a conversation about, you know, what else is happening, you know, where does the money in the house go?
And brings out all the mental health issues if they're living with a partner, with a dependency on something or whatever.
But in my HMR work, mental health has been significant the last few years because I tend to work Central Queensland and the drought just destroyed families, destroyed lives.
And so I would go to see , you know, a person that the doctor went me to see, and their living conditions were just terrible.
You know, their house was so run down and, you know, they'd had to remove all their stock or their crops had died.
And you could just tell that, you know, the wife and the children, if they were still there, they were struggling.
And sometimes you'd go and, you know, like mum was working in town to try and keep some money coming in and stuff like that.
So the children could no longer go to boarding school.
So they were being homeschooled.
Like everything changed with how severe the drought was.
And it wasn't just the suicide.
It was the whole family dynamics changed.
You know, kids were sent to live with grandma on the eastern seaboard and things like that, just, you know, so that they could get through.
And as a pharmacist, you know, some trips, particularly, you know, like the back of charter towers, Balanda Crossing, that sort of area, became extremely confronting.
It just, so you need to do the mental health First aid course so that you understand what you can do and how to talk to a patient, but you also need it for yourself.
You know, like there's just days where you drive away thinking, oh, this is just unbelievable be bad.
This is Australia.
And these people are just so, so driven down and so relentlessly taking one knock after another.
And now it's just, it's not funny, but it's just so odd.
But today, the same area is now in fl.
It's just, it's just had the highest rainfall in the last 25 years in the same area.
So they go from one sort of disaster to another.
But I think, you know, I agree that mental health first day qualifications should be a must for every health provider, but I do think our degree courses need to have a component in them, whether it's firsty site, whatever, to, it's particularly in communication.
Like you can just say something really simple in a counselling, you know, with a young mum or or whatever.
And a whole flood of tears and disaster will come out, you know, domestic violence or whatever.
And you need to know what to say next and how do you control that and how to manage it?
Because suddenly you're faced with a very distraught customer and, you know, how do you fix it?
And, well, not fix it, but how do you support that person?
Yeah, completely agree.
And you're right.
There's been times where, and I think about my practice and most of these situations have occurred when I've been working in rural areas.
And I think the pharmacy is kind of quite a safe place for people to go.
But when you just briefly touched on domestic violence, a similar situation happened to me where I was in a consult room doing a meds check on someone.
I think I was doing meds check or maybe I was counselling on a new medication.
I can't quite remember, but then just asking a particular question, then she opened up.
That was something that she was experiencing.
And at the time I was only first year out.
I was not equipped to deal with that situation.
And, yeah, it's, you really need to be prepared because I think we're in the business of people.
Yes, we're medicines experts, but who takes medicines are humans, right or people?
And so I think, yeah, understanding, we don't have to be experts in it, but just being able to at least, yeah, what to do in those situations or just be able to read people a bit differently, just give them the right support backwards, back to them.
Yep.
Yeah, absolutely.
After that situation happened to me, the woman was very lovely and I just said, oh, look, I'm not sure what to do now that you've told me this.
And she's like, it's just nice to say it out loud.
I'm like, okay, well, like we're here.
I don't know what we can do, but like, I'm sure there's some support things we can look into.
And she said, no, that's fine, but it's just nice to open up about it.
So I thought that was a win, even though sometimes I always just randomly one night, I'll be thinking about it at night time about this poor woman.
And I'm like, oh my gosh, she's still alive, but you can't fix everyone's problems.
But one thing, if anyone's listening, there's a really good program out there called DV Alert.
I don't know if you've heard of that, Karalyn, and it's funded by the government and it's for what they, I think they call them first responders, but pharmacy is considered a first respond.
And again, it doesn't teach you like how to fix the problem.
It just teaches you how to have that conversation with someone.
So if anyone's listening, they definitely recommend everyone should do that course as well.
I think it was only a few hours or four hours.
Now, Karalyn, we've chatted about the rural experience a lot and mental health, your early experiences in pharmacy.
If we transition maybe a bit forward into your career, you've had many different roles, you've advocated a lot.
And so I think as a woman as well well, how did you manage juggling everything then?
Someone that, yeah, was wanting to be voice for people, making change, trying all these different roles in careers.
I'm sure it wasn't easy all the time.
And so , yeah, maybe you could share with us, maybe how you helped to manage that in your career.
Yeah, it certainly wasn't easy.
I was very lucky.
We made a conscious decision when we had our two children that Ron, my husband, he gave up work to to bring the girls up.
And so we were a one income family, which was me then.
But it was our decision not to go down.
Oh we did start down the daycare route and then we just decided that wasn't working for us.
Because I wanted to do more and give back to my profession a lot, Ron actually really supported me by he looked after the girls as and, you know, did all the parenting and I as I flitted in at the door.
But my mum and dad lived here too and my sister.
So, you know, I had a support network.
I had friends as well with kids the same age.
So you sort of balanced everything and with as much as you can do.
And I was managing a large group of pharmacies at that time.
So because I was the general manager, I was able to sort of flex my time between my employment and my roles in Canberra and away.
And as much as I could, but it was pretty, it was a pretty hard grind.
Yeah.
And I I did it.
It wasn't as pleasant as people think, you know, they think, oh, you get on a plane and you fly up here and you fly off that.
But cancel flights, flights that don't, you know, things happen.
You land in grotty airports and you end up having to sleep in a grotty airport because something else has happened or , you know, you get suspended at Sydney because the flight to Canberra can't go because of the winds or whatever, or your luggage is still sitting on Sydney airport tarmac and you saw it sitting there when they took off all those fun things.
And I would fly into Canberra on Sunday nights and I always say to the hotel wherever they put me up, you know, can you leave me a meal in my room?
You know, part of everything?
And it was never, ever there.
It didn't matter which hotel.
It never happened.
And Canberra on Sunday nights, like it shuts at six and it's so hot hard to find food.
It's like, it's ridiculously stupid.
And I didn't have a car.
I was, you know, and Canberra's always freezing.
Anyway, so I was never fond of Canberra.
It The people were beautiful, but everything else about the whole tripping in and tripping out was just not my fun idea.
I landed one night.
I had, it was in the Tony Abbott era, and we had a big program for the next few days about launching the hepatitis C program that was going to be launched through pharmacy.
And I landed on the Sunday night.
It'd been a really tough flight.
I got to the hotel and my room was completely just dismantled.
They were just pulling it up.
They had pulled it apart, like everything, the shower, everything was dismantled.
It was just a heap.
And I went downstairs. Downstairs and I said, hey, I can't sleep in there.
Yeah, it looks like a junk room.
Oh, that's the only room we got.
And I went, you have got to be kidding me.
Yeah, like, this is 11 o'clock on a frosty camera, evening.
So my career in advocacy, I didn't enjoy that part of it.
I enjoyed the fight and I loved the argument and that to make pharmacy be a primary healthcare provider and not considered as a retailer of coffee and soap powder.
But one of the things that I think really helped in the end, I pulled out of flying as much when my kids became teenagers because girls as teenagers are much harder for a father. To look after than babies.
They really are.
They're just 20 times worse in terms of hysterics, lost things, you know, life-ending criteria that they have.
And I felt it was time for him him to have arrest from being the person that was always being in trouble.
But the thing that came along and helped a lot with the work I do was COVID.
And COVID made us use IT.
It made us use other forms to do things.
And as bad as COVID was, in terms of development of how you communicate across Australia and across the world, it just changed everything.
And suddenly, you know, I was doing symposiums, three day symposiums online and it worked.
And, you know, like it was just amazing, you know, and they'd have breakouts for morning tea.
They would send me, it was really funny and they were just so great.
They would send me my little care package.
So I'd be sitting here in my office at home in Mackay on a three-day symposium and this little package would come and it'd have my snacks for my morning teas and it'd had have vouchers that I can buy food at the..
Oh, that's such a great idea.
It's making you feel part of the actual.
I love that.
And they were totally virtual.
So we all would get our care package.
We would get everything was blackboard or Canber or whatever program they wanted to use.
And they still did things like, so if you go to APP and you've got to go around all the stands and all that, well, in these virtual symposiums, they still did that.
They did virtual manufacturer stands.
So in the breaks, you could go around and you could be doing like checkgroup to a rep and ordering what you wanted.
And it was, you know, we used IT efficiently and intelligently and I'm going, oh my God, I don't have to fly and get away and, you know, like it was just, it made those kind of ideas come.
And so now that we're sort of over over that hump of COVID and we're back to some kind of normality, it makes me really angry when people say, oh, no, you've got a flight to Adelaide because we want you all in one room.
And I go, no, we have these amazing things called virtual rooms and yeah, like we did it for two and a half years.
Do not go backwards, but I don't always win that argument.
Yeah.
So, you know, so the flying around got tedious and then got better because we went through IT.
But yeah, so and now there's, yeah, it's doing all the advocacy work is hard when you live regionally because you can't just drop everything and appear, you know, because somebody at a Senate Estimates meeting wants to discuss something or other.
You can't just flit across the country.
You know, I'd get last minute calls to be in Adelaide tomorrow for three days and you just can't do that, which is.
And that's exactly what it's like.
They are very last minutes.
You can have things planned for months and then all of a sudden schedule change or they'll drop something and, yeah, oh, can someone represent, oh, when?
3 p.m today?
What?
I was coming can't happen.
It's bizarre.
Yeah.
So I do as much as I can, but yeah, it was tough trying to do it from a regional location.
I wasn't just around the corner to do all the things that I did.
But yeah, I did as much as I could manage.
Oh, well done.
I'm so glad that there are people like you that do choose to still participate in those things even when it is to difficult because it's not without people like you that actually step up and do these things where change happens.
So thank you from a future fatherist for all your hard work.
Now, Karalyn, we're coming towards the end of the podcast now.
Is there anything that you would like to share with the listeners, maybe something that we haven't covered that you think is really important that you wanted to get across?
And if not , yeah, what advice would you maybe give to those that are listening?
Yeah, Pharmacy is going through a change again right now.
And I think all of the programs that have rolled out, you know, immunisization, neuron attract infection, oral contraceptives., all of that is just their stepping stones that have been valuable and they just lead to the next step and the next step.
And, you know, I think for a young grad at the moment, my wisdom words would be, don't think that once you stop being at university, that's the end of your learning journey.
Pharmacies is a praise that you just have to keep learning.
It doesn't matter whether it's just the new drugs that the doctors write or what, but and never be afraid to be just that little step more, you know, everything that you take on, whether it's expanded scope of practice, or just setting up an immunisation, immunisation practice, whatever, it's all important because it is is important to remember we're a healthcare provider, we're a medication management expert.
And I say to my pharmacies, students that I tutor, you never ever say to to anyone, you're just a pharmacist .
You're the very important medication management person, whether it's on a grand round or just standing in a community pharmacy.
You use your knowledge and you work collaboratively.
And I think as pharmacists, we now have much more vision in providing healthcare.
Like, you know, when I started it as an immunizer, the turf war was terrible.
Everybody hated us and, you know, like, I can't recall how many lovely messages I got from various doctors saying, you know, the world is going to end because you're going to kill someone.
And then the UTI project, I got the same letters.
But immunisation now for me, I look back and I say to the same GPs, okay, so now you send me all your immunisation because you want to be a GP and you want to be managing patients' chronic diseases and I can take that load off you.
How funny is that?
And they just look, at here, go, yeah, whatever.
It's you, it's being baby steps, but we are growing in what we can do and never lose sigh that you are a healthcare provider.
You're not a seller of soap and tissues.
You are a healthcare provider. Amen to that.
I think.
Sometimes it can be hard to remember that sometimes, especially depending on where you're working or if it's really busy that, yeah, try and think of, yeah, the impact that you're having and I I know when I still do my community pharmacy work and you can hear things beeping and you think, oh my gosh, I don't think I could do this full time anymore, but then we have that in interaction with the patient and they're like, oh, thank you so much.
Like that is so helpful.
And then you think, oh, yes, that's why I do what I do.
Yeah.
You touched on when of the things that I've done in my career is diversify my practice.
So while I still work in community, I also, you know, my major work is as consultant.
So I do med reviews, I I consult to government, I consult to things like army health networks and aged care and immunising and stuff.
Like, I think , to me, diversifying what you do stops you from getting into that rat of, R, am I just checking Webster packs all week?
Because I still do check Webster packs, but I don't hate them as much as I used to because I do that for one afternoon a week and then the rest of the week I do other things, you know, at the moment, I tutor in dentistry and pharmacy and I love it.
And, you know, my postgrad dentistry students are just amazing.
They think a pharmacist is just the best thing they've actually made friends with.
And yeah, it's like, that's awesome.
Yeah.
So I think diversify, just diversify what you do.
If you're finding a little self a little bit lost, a little bit jaded, just pick out what you really like and get a couple of different, you know, don't commit yourself to 7 days of standing in a community pharmacy.
Just do some other things.
Yeah, I definitely see a huge shift in a lot of pharmacists, yeah, doing different things, which I think is just awesome.
It's basically with a pharmacy degree, you can really like chart your own path, which I don't think many other industries or professions have that or it's not as easy to be able to do that.
And I think, yeah, so long as, like, I hope that if there's any owners out there listening, that you, do you consider being a little bit more flexible.
And so rather than, especially in rural areas, I sometimes hear people say, oh, there's a workforce issue, but then they're not open to taking someone who's willing to do just four days a week.
They're like, no, I need someone five days a week.
But this first thing is amazing and you're just hooked on just that one day a week thing.
So I think, yeah, just thinking about the workforce a bit differently.
And I know when I was working in rural areas and you have to work, like I was, I remember I do five days, two days off, seven days, one day off.
And I did that two years straight.
And after two years, I had to leave because I and it, they were like, oh, like, why didn't you get involved in the community?
I'm like, I was working every second weekend.
How I can How have I ever expected to integrate with the community?
If I can't even go and meet the community.
No, yeah.
And it is like that.
And I'm staying to see pharmacies and I know this was put out as a bad thing, but I'm staying to see pharmacies approach workforce with a little bit more sense and sensibility.
So they're cutting back their opening hours, you know, they they might open nine to five now and maybe nine to one on Saturdays and not Sundays.
So they, and they train the community that they're in to their new hours.
And it takes a bit of effort, but rather than burn yourself out and not be there at all, be proactive to look at, okay, what's sustainable?
If I want to not open Thursdays till 11 11, so I've got time to go to the doctor's appointments or whatever, then I have to do that so that I'm still in the community.
And I think, you know, while that's sometimes held up as a workforce officialiency in a community, the community will understand if you give them the knowledge of why you do that.
And GPs are doing it.
Like, they just can't serve as a community seven days a week and still stay sane and alive.
So I think we all need to have a serious look at how we look after ourselves.
Oh, Oh, absolutely.
Well, Karalyn, thank you so much.
This has been a really wonderful discussion.
It's been, I have found it really insightful and really interesting to hear all the different aspects of pharmacy that you've been a part of over the years.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you. On the show.
It's lovely.
Do you have any last words to say to our listeners?
No, pharmacy is an amazing career.
You can make it as good as you can, but don't make it a slave.
Don't make you a slave to a pharmacy.
Just enjoy it and work out what works for you.
Absolutely.
Well, thank you so much, everyone, for listening and thank you, Karalyn.
Thank you.
It's been great.
Thanks for tuning in to Your Pharmacy Career podcast, proudly sponsored by the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia.
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Final Thoughts
Karalyn Huxhagen’s career is a testament to what can be achieved through passion, resilience, and an unwavering commitment to community health. Her journey offers invaluable lessons for pharmacists at all stages: that advocacy matters, that flexibility can breathe new life into your career, and that the real heart of pharmacy lies in patient-centred care, especially for underserved populations.
As Australian pharmacy continues to evolve—embracing expanded scope, rural innovation, and mental health awareness—pharmacists like Karalyn show us the way forward: by being bold, adaptable, and deeply connected to the communities we serve.
At Raven’s Recruitment, we’re proud to support Australian community pharmacists in finding not just any pharmacy job, but a role that truly resonates with your values, career goals, and lifestyle. If Karalyn’s story has inspired you to think differently about your future, we’re here to help you take that next step.
How will you shape your pharmacy career to make a lasting impact?
