Mater Pharmacy celebrates 80 years
- Release Date: 1/07/2010
- For media enquiries please contact 07 3163 1524 or the afterhours on call media officer on 07 3163 8111.
“It looks so simple, but in fact, the obstacles which had to be overcome were enormous” Sister Mercia Mary
On 1 July 2010 Mater Pharmacy will celebrate 80 years of providing individualised and comprehensive care to Queenslanders.
It was on this day in 1930, the Sisters of Mercy opened their first pharmacy at Mater Private Hospital, South Brisbane.
At the time Queensland law required pharmacies to be owned by pharmacists so the pharmacy was registered in the secular name of Sister Mercia Mary—the Sisters’ only qualified pharmacist.
This step undertaken by Sister Mercia Mary established a precedence that has allowed Mater to operate a private pharmacy since then. It also provided scope for a new era—the rights to own and operate an additional five community pharmacies, along with the pharmacy in Mater Private Hospital Brisbane.
The full consequences of this decision by Sister Mercia Mary wouldn’t have been known at the time, but it heralded the start of an exceptional 80 year journey for Mater Pharmacy.
Under the leadership of the five directors over the intervening eight decades, Mater Pharmacy went through many moves and tough times.
Sister Mercia Mary’s role was varied; she liaised with medical staff and, as times assisted with patient-to-patient blood transfusions. Due to demand on services, she later requested another two Sisters of Mercy, Sister Mary Conrad and Sister Agnese, be trained as chemists.
With the outbreak of World War II, the Pharmacy was told to pare expenditure to the bone. It was thanks to Sr Mercia Mary who foresaw what difficulties may lie ahead prior to the outbreak of war that enabled Mater Pharmacy to survive by obtaining supplies and ordering large quantities of drugs and dressings from overseas.
These challenging times were followed by building an extension to the pharmacy in the 1950s allowing the Sisters to create an autoclave which was used for the preparation of sterile eye drops and other solutions.
In the early 1960s it became clear the metric system would supersede the imperial system of measurement and Sr Mercia Mary introduced the new system across Mater Private Hospital, Mater Adults Hospital all wards and the pharmacy in one weekend.
In the 40 years that followed, the Pharmacy saw the opening of two `satellite’ outlets in Mater Mothers’ Hospital and Mater Adults Hospital and a relocation to the Potter Building from the old Queenslander to make way for Mater Children’s Hospital. The new hospital included a new Pharmacy.
As the 21st century approached, new drug therapies and innovative drug delivery systems meant Mater Pharmacy had to adapt to new practices including patient-controlled analgesia delivery systems; which have become more important in innovative modern treatments.
While Mater pharmacies had traditionally been hospital-based, with a focus on acute clinical care, there has been a move more recently to link inpatient care to care in the community.
Reviews of patient medication are now conducted in the patients’ own homes whenever it is requested by a general practitioner and this has now grown to include reviews in nursing homes.
In 1995, Mater Pharmacy launched the Queensland Medication Helpline., Australia’s first public ‘call centre’ to answer public queries about medication. The helpline later grew to include a national service for the public as well as a service for health professionals to report adverse drug reactions.
With the new millennium came further community involvement with the opening of Mater Pharmacy Redland in December 2009 with further expansion from Mater Hill to occur in the future.
Mater Pharmacy Services Director Stephen Parry-Jones commented that “the move to offer services directly to the community was driven by a need for quality pharmaceutical support that was accessible and convenient to the general public, and promoted a holistic approach to health that recognises the individual and puts them in control.”
The faces of Mater Pharmacy
Sr Mercia Mary was the inspirational force behind Mater Pharmacy. She was the Sister’s first qualified pharmacist and the legal owner of Mater Pharmacy from its inception until she retired in 1981. It took her more than a year to set up the original retail pharmacy. Mercia Mary’s legacy also included the encouragement of more Sisters of Mercy to be trained as pharmacists and management of the introduction of the metric system in the 1960s.
Sr Marie Therese led Mater Pharmacy from 1963. Her legacy included implementing ward pharmacy services in the early 1970s. She was pivotal in improving pharmacy services for the state and became Queensland’s first Fellow of Hospital Pharmacy.
Joy Bostock became Mater’s first lay Chief Pharmacist in 1982. She worked closely with Sr Marie Therese to implement innovative services such as satellite pharmacies, sterile product manufacturing and a drug formulary for the Mater campus.
In 1993, Bob Marshall became Director and took on the challenging task of bringing together Mater’s public and private pharmacies as an integrated single service.
More recently, Director Stephen Parry-Jones and the team have been working to optimise medication safety and the quality of service delivery for the patients of Mater Health Services. Their goal is to position Mater Pharmacy as a leader in the management of medication safety in the future.