Curtis Ruhnau - From Mad Scientist to Community Pharmacist

We sit down with Curtis Ruhnau, an award-winning community pharmacist with more than 40 years of experience, current President of the Pharmacists' Support Service, and a passionate advocate for community-centred pharmacy.

Curtis became the youngest licensed pharmacist in NSW at just 21. Together with his wife, he has built a nationally recognised pharmacy founded on trust, compassion and genuine patient care. From harm minimisation initiatives to supporting vulnerable members of the community, Curtis shares why the most rewarding pharmacy careers are built by putting people first.

In this episode:

• How becoming the youngest licensed pharmacist in NSW shaped his career
• Why community outreach and harm minimisation improve patient outcomes
• Leadership lessons from guiding a pharmacy through the COVID-19 pandemic
• Why mental health and domestic violence training matter for every pharmacist
• The importance of asking for help and supporting the wellbeing of the profession
• Why the greatest legacy in pharmacy is the impact you have on your community

"It's not just about the business, it's about the people you serve, and the legacy you leave."

Great pharmacy careers aren't built on dispensing medicines alone - they're built on trust, leadership and service. Listen now.

You can find Curtis Ruhnau on LinkedIn.

Resources

• Pharmacist Support Service - https://pharmacistsupport.org.au/
• DV Alert - Domestic Violence Training - https://www.dvalert.org.au/
• Small Business Big Impact Podcast - https://smallbusinessbigimpact.com/

About Your Pharmacy Career Podcast

Welcome to Your Pharmacy Career Podcast, proudly produced by Raven’s Recruitment - the experts in pharmacy career and locum services for over 30 years!

Hosted by Pharmacist, Krysti-Lee Patterson, 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. Whether you're a student, an early-career pharmacist, or a seasoned professional, this podcast is designed to keep you informed and inspired.

Proudly brought to you by the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia. The PSA is committed to empowering pharmacists through advocacy, innovation, and industry-leading professional development. To become a member or learn more about how the PSA can support your career, visit www.psa.org.au.

Pharmacy Daily is a proud supporter of Your Pharmacy Career Podcast. If you're in the pharmacy world, it's a great resource to stay up to date with the latest industry news. To subscribe, just head to pharmacydaily.com.au to get the newsletter delivered straight to your inbox.

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.

Stay tuned.

The next step in your pharmacy journey starts here.

Krysti-Lee: Welcome to Your Pharmacy Career Podcast.

I am your host, as usual, Krysti-Lee Patterson, and today I’m joined by someone whose story I’ve been looking forward to sharing for a long time.

My guest is Curtis Ruhnau, a community pharmacist who has been in the profession for just over 40 years, I believe.

He is the current President of the Pharmacists’ Support Service.

Up until recently, he was also a partner at Emerton Amcal Pharmacy in Western Sydney, a pharmacy he built with his wife, Margaret, and his colleagues over more than 25 years.

Welcome to the podcast, Curtis.

Curtis: G’day, Krysti-Lee. It’s always great to catch up.

Krysti-Lee: Curtis, as I said, you’ve been a community pharmacy owner for quite some time with your wife, but you’ve recently sold your pharmacy.

I wanted to understand what that feels like after being a community pharmacist for so long.

I’m sure you’ll probably say that you are still a community pharmacist.

Curtis: I definitely am a community pharmacist. Like so many of us, I live and breathe, and occasionally bleed, community pharmacy.

It felt weird to start with, waking up in the morning and having no particular place to be.

That felt really weird, but it is something we are rapidly acclimatising to.

That being said, I’m looking forward to getting into some other things. I guess we can talk about that a little later.

After being responsible for so long, not just for ourselves but for all the people we worked with and for looking after the community, it is both a relief and a really weird feeling to wake up and only be answerable to ourselves.

So, yes, it’s a funny feeling.

Krysti-Lee: It would be a very big change from having to wake up every day and get to the pharmacy.

As you said, we’ll touch on what you’re doing now a little later in the episode.

Let’s go back to the very beginning.

You can pinpoint the exact moment you decided what you wanted to do with your life. I’d love you to share that with our listeners.

Curtis: Sure. At age 15, I was absolutely certain I was going to be a mad scientist.

I loved science, and I pictured myself with a lab coat and crazy hair from having blown something up.

I had a job in a hardware store at age 16 and realised that I liked working with the public. That was the start.

At about that time, I also had some pimples - not bad acne, just some pimples - and my doctor prescribed antibiotics for me, as happens.

I took those, ran out, and Mum sent me up to Mr Manning, our local pharmacist, to get an owing prescription for the antibiotics.

He said to me, “Curtis, your face is actually looking really good now. I don’t think you need any more antibiotics.”

He explained the concept of antibiotic resistance and the risks of taking too many antibiotics. He said that if the doctor prescribed them again, he would phone the doctor and have a chat about whether they were really necessary.

At that point, I realised that this man I looked up to was not only working with the public, but he was also doing science in a really cool way.

From that point, I never really wanted to be anything other than a community pharmacist.

Krysti-Lee: I love that you wanted to be a mad scientist.

Maybe we can call you the mad pharmacist in the white coat.

Curtis: Look, it probably wouldn’t be the first time somebody has referred to me as a mad pharmacist, but it’s probably not really a handle I can put on LinkedIn or anywhere else.

Krysti-Lee: That’s quite unique, and it definitely impacted your life at that point in time.

Curtis: In some ways it is unique, but it probably shouldn’t be.

I don’t know whether he knew much about me, other than that I was somebody he wanted to make sure understood that there were pluses and minuses to a particular course of action. He was explaining that to me.

In a bit of a full-circle moment, my first boss had also trained under him.

There was this line of pharmacists who had come through. I was inspired by him, but my first boss had been taught and inspired by him as well.

It was an interesting full-circle moment to realise that as we got into it.

Krysti-Lee: From that point, you thought this could potentially be something you could do in the future.

When you were doing your pharmacy degree - which I would say was probably just a few years ago, if I can be a bit cheeky - what were some of the differences between your experience as a student and the experience students have now?

I know you’re heavily involved in mentoring students and remain very active in our industry.

When you went through university, pharmacists couldn’t administer vaccines and couldn’t provide many of the services they provide now.

Can you share some reflections or insights about your experience as a student compared with pharmacy students today?

Curtis: Definitely.

What I realise has changed so much is that our community has always expected us to be there for them. I think that’s why pharmacists have had such a solid reputation for such a long time.

However, what we can actually do for our communities now has changed.

Think about an outreach vaccination program. That is an incredible thing we can do to help keep our communities safe.

We now have the ability to take somebody into a consultation room and have a discussion with them about starting something such as an antidepressant.

Somebody starting an antidepressant has probably been feeling terrible for a long time.

They may have been offered an antidepressant a couple of times by their doctor, or by different doctors, and refused, thinking, “Maybe I’ll get better.”

They’ve finally reached a point where they can no longer refuse that help. They’re willing to take any help.

We know this person may be feeling low enough to be contemplating suicide.

We’re going to give them an antidepressant, which we know isn’t going to make them feel better for at least 10 days to two weeks. They may continue improving over the first couple of months, but they could be thinking more clearly within a few days and possibly sleeping a little better as well.

We need to ask them, “Have you been thinking about suicide?”

We need to be able to sit with them and understand what we need to say when they say no, when they say yes, or when they say, “No, but…”

Whatever comes after that “but” is so important to them, and it’s probably what has driven them to talk to us.

The ability to do that in a private consultation room is such a significant change.

I know pharmacists have had consultation rooms in the past. A friend of mine whose family has been in pharmacy for a long time had consultation rooms back in the 1970s, but that wasn’t usual.

The ability to have private conversations and for people to open up about all sorts of things has been a significant and very welcome change in the way I’ve enjoyed practising as a community pharmacist.

Krysti-Lee: I completely agree.

As the years go on, in another 10 years there will probably be even more changes.

At the end of the day, what stays the same is the values or mission of a pharmacist. We’re there to help patients and meet them where they are.

As society, life and the world change, what “where they are” looks like will also change.

That’s an exciting thing for students now. They can meet patients where they are through services such as vaccination outreach programs.

Curtis: It really is.

Margaret and I have always talked about our role in terms of health literacy. The vehicle we use to enter that conversation with people is usually medication - sometimes prescriptions and sometimes Webster-paks.

At the moment, and I’m sure for a long time to come, AI or a machine cannot assess somebody’s level of health literacy in the same way as a properly trained pharmacist who has time to spend with that patient.

Meeting people where they are is also about understanding where they are.

We did a lot of outreach work through the pharmacy, so sometimes that meant physically going to where people were.

More often, however, it meant meeting them where they were in their heads and helping them understand their health.

Although I might give you a cholesterol tablet on a Tuesday, you won’t feel any different on Thursday.

Hopefully, though, on a Thursday in 15 or 20 years’ time, you won’t have had your first heart attack.

If we can prevent people from having their first heart attack by helping them understand what they’re doing and why, then I think we’ve done a great job for them.

To me, that’s what meeting people where they are really means.

Sometimes it means getting out of our own space.

More often, it means finding out what people understand about their health and adding a couple of layers to that understanding so they know how to look after themselves and their families a little better.

Krysti-Lee: So they can actually enjoy the life they have, right?

Curtis: Absolutely.

Krysti-Lee: Curtis, I’d like to take you through your journey to where you are now as a pharmacist.

Were there periods when you doubted what you were doing, or were you always clear that you wanted to move towards pharmacy ownership?

Curtis: I always wanted to be able to run the business.

I had some great roles as a pharmacist-in-charge and pharmacy manager, and I really enjoyed those.

I wanted to work towards becoming a pharmacy owner, but Margaret and I were both the first university graduates in our families. We hadn’t owned businesses in the family, so we didn’t even know what that looked like.

When the time came, I needed to reach out to the wholesalers to find out where we could buy a business and how we could do it.

They were great at the time.

I remember going to one wholesaler, and they said, “Have you thought about a partnership? I know there are people out there who want to keep their hands in but don’t actually want to do the work.”

In the back of my mind, I had been a pharmacist-in-charge in a busy dispensary, with more than 30 people in the whole store and probably half of those in the dispensary.

That sounded to me like somebody interfering. They wanted to keep their hands in, and I didn’t want that.

I would rather have owned a small store and been in charge of the whole thing.

I went to another wholesaler, and the person there said, “Have you thought about a partnership? I’ve got somebody who is looking for you.”

“They have a business they’re looking to buy, and they don’t want to run it. They just want somebody who’s passionate and ready to take it on.”

That might have been the same opportunity coming from both places.

One was presented in a way that made me feel as though I was going to be told what to do. The other was presented as an opportunity.

The opportunity was to use somebody else’s money to help us buy a business that Margaret and I couldn’t have bought on our own.

With a larger business, there are more opportunities - more opportunities for growth, for the team to specialise, and for us to develop as business owners and pharmacists.

That was at age 33, which is not particularly young.

When I look back on my career, so much of what people know me for started only about 15 or 16 years ago.

My first foray into any sort of representative work was joining what was then the new PDL New South Wales Local Advisory Committee. That was only 16 years ago.

It’s interesting that the things people know me for haven’t been my whole career.

Much of my early career was spent learning my skills and trying to deal as best I could with the day-to-day work.

About five years after finishing university, I completed a master’s degree in management because I realised I was working in management positions without really having the skills for them.

That was good, but it wasn’t an answer in itself. It taught me a way to learn and gave me an understanding of management principles.

So much of what people now know me for came from the opportunity I was given in 2008 to join the PDL Local Advisory Committee.

Krysti-Lee: I didn’t know that about you.

I guess that’s right. When you meet people and get to know them, you only know the parts of their lives you’ve been present for. People have lives before and after they come into yours.

Curtis: What I want people to realise from that is that it’s never too late.

Sixteen years ago, I was 42 when I started with PDL.

It was about five years after that, when I was 47, that I became a director of PDL.

I was 52 when I joined the Pharmacists’ Support Service, and I was 55 when I became President of PSS.

All these things happened relatively late in my life and career.

It has been a ride and a half, Krysti-Lee, doing this work with people.

I’d like people to realise that where you are today may be very different from where you end up.

I never thought for a second that I would end up as a director on a national board, helping people understand their roles and responsibilities, thoroughly enjoying all of that, and that it would then lead me to the PSA.

It’s never too late, and you don’t need to achieve everything by 27.

It’s okay if, at 27 - and I’m just picking that age out of the air - you’re busy with other things.

At 27, our daughter was born. She was our first child, and we were busy being parents.

Most of the things people might know me for have happened in the last 15 or 16 years, and many of them much more recently than that.

Krysti-Lee: That’s a great takeaway.

I’m personally someone who wants to get everything done now - or actually yesterday.

I don’t know whether that’s a personality thing or an ADHD thing.

With social media, we’re constantly looking at people who are achieving and doing things, which is great. As an industry, we should support and celebrate the amazing people doing great things.

Sometimes, though, that can come at a cost to those who are earlier in their careers - and not necessarily earlier by age.

I was at a Charles Sturt University alumni event last week and was speaking with the Vice-Chancellor.

He said that across Charles Sturt University - I’m not sure whether he meant all disciplines or just pharmacy, although I think it was all disciplines - only 15 per cent of students this year were school-leavers.

The majority were mature-age students, and genuinely mature-age.

When I went to CSU in Orange for my pharmacy degree, I was considered mature-age at 21.

There was nothing mature about me at 21, looking back, although I’m sure I thought I was very mature at that age.

If you’re early in your pharmacy career but have had a whole life or career in other areas, it doesn’t mean you’ve missed out. There are still plenty of opportunities for you in our industry.

Curtis: Absolutely.

Some of the best practitioners in any profession, whether it’s teaching or something else, are people who have had another career.

Through that career, they’ve decided there is somewhere else they need to be, where they feel they can offer their passion and insight.

That’s a valuable thing.

It wasn’t my trajectory, but it’s powerful for people to understand what they want and then realise it’s okay to change careers.

That’s an interesting observation.

Fifteen per cent sounds very low, but it’s a fascinating statistic.

Krysti-Lee: I’m 98 per cent sure that was the exact number.

I’m sure I remembered it correctly because it was such a low number. I was shocked by it.

It got me thinking about how people learn and perform best at university later in life, but maybe that’s another podcast episode.

Curtis: Yes, I’m home!

Krysti-Lee: Curtis, I’d love to know more about your experience as an owner.

You didn’t just own a business with other partners - one of your business partners was also your life partner.

I think it’s amazing that you and Margaret built both a pharmacy and a life together.

For me and my husband, I don’t know whether I would want to work with him every day as well.

I purposely tried to meet someone who wasn’t in pharmacy.

Curtis: Fair enough.

I suppose I would start by saying that at age 33, there was still an awful lot I didn’t understand, particularly accounting, bookkeeping and rostering.

I remain terrible at rostering.

Krysti-Lee: I don’t think anyone is perfect at rostering. We’re waiting for AI to solve that problem.

Curtis: Exactly.

We had two senior partners, Matthew and Tony. Unfortunately, Tony has now passed away, but they were great mentors for me early in the role.

Our children were young. The pharmacy was mine, and I was working there.

I realised that, even as a sole pharmacist in a pharmacy - and at the time there was only one pharmacist working at any one time - you very rarely get three minutes to work on one job before there’s an interruption.

You might be able to put the second thing off, but it’s still an interruption, whether it’s a phone call, a prescription to check or something else to do.

That was something I felt I did well, but I know I enjoy working in multi-pharmacist pharmacies much more than I enjoyed working as a sole pharmacist.

They require very different skill sets.

Margaret is wonderful at rostering.

When we had things we needed to discuss - a way forward, a plan, whether to take option A or option B - we made sure we discussed them between ourselves.

When we went into the pharmacy, we were both pointing in the same direction.

The team knew that whether they spoke to one of us or the other, they would receive the same answer.

That’s not to say we didn’t argue.

We’re a couple. We’ve been married for 36 years, and there have been the odd bumpy roads.

I’m sure the team could tell you when we were communicating well and when we weren’t.

We often joked in the kitchen in the morning that, on some days, we were like a ballet. There was beautiful coordination between the two of us, like choreography.

On other days, we were like dodgem cars, bumping into each other.

Our communication was a bit like that too.

Sometimes we were on the same wavelength. Other times, we struggled to understand each other’s points of view and reach an agreement.

That is hard, but I cannot think of anybody I would rather practise pharmacy with than the love of my life.

We’ve spent so much time together.

They say that behind every good man is a great woman, but I think that if your life partner isn’t side by side with you, either physically or metaphorically, you are letting the best in life pass you by.

They don’t need to be physically beside you in the room, but they need to be beside you in some sense.

Some of our best days were those when team members were off sick and it was Margaret and me manning the lifeboats, keeping everything going with limited staff.

We would turn up in the morning with a commitment that we were going to get through it together.

Sometimes, at the end of the day, we’d walk hand in hand to the car saying, “You know what? We nailed it today. We really did.”

We had our ups and downs.

There were moments when one of us would say, “You go and get lunch, and I’ll keep this going,” or, “Go and take a break. Get out and do whatever you need to do. I’ve got this.”

That understanding between each other was special, and it’s something I really enjoyed about our time working together.

Krysti-Lee: That’s wonderful. I really love that.

You’re right. Whether it’s a business partner or life partner, what you’ve described is what a good partnership should look like.

From a business perspective, when you’re working side by side with somebody for most of your time, that partnership is so important.

It brings me such joy to hear you talk about your relationship with Margaret in that way. It’s really wonderful.

I’ve heard other owners say that going into business with someone is like a marriage.

Maybe the fact that you and Margaret are also life partners helped it work because you know each other so well.

You know the good, the bad, the ugly and the great, and you find a way to deal with it.

I’ve seen friends and colleagues in partnerships that were like toxic relationships, where they were trying to get out.

Curtis: It’s interesting.

When we were coming together with our senior partner, we didn’t really know each other at all.

He said, “You just need to have your hands above the table at all times. If we know what you’re doing and why, we can back you. But if we start to wonder whether we can trust you, then we’re in all sorts of trouble.”

We always maintained that communication.

I remember we had a particularly rough night because a staff member had done something we wished they hadn’t.

I rang our senior partner and said, “I’m not exactly sure how to deal with this. I think I need to call this staff member in and have a conversation.”

Our senior partner said, “I will be there with you. I will sit in the room with you.”

Tony didn’t work in the pharmacy and didn’t live near the pharmacy, but he said, “Just arrange a time, and I’ll be there.”

That was the kind of support we provided each other.

Of course, it went both ways.

He knew I was managing his money well, and I knew that if I really needed him, he would be there for me.

Krysti-Lee: Absolutely.

I think that’s what everyone would like in their business relationships as well as their customer relationships.

Pharmacy Daily is a proud supporter of Your Pharmacy Career Podcast. If you’re in the pharmacy world, it’s a great resource for staying up to date with the latest industry news. To subscribe, head to pharmacydaily.com.au to have the newsletter delivered straight to your inbox.

During the years you owned the pharmacy, a lot happened.

There were global financial crises, major world events and a pandemic. You name it, you’ve probably lived through it as a pharmacy owner and community pharmacist.

One thing I’m learning is that, no matter what’s happening in the world or the community, pharmacy is always there.

That can be great, but it can also be very demanding for you and your staff.

I imagine those experiences have contributed to where you are today with the Pharmacists’ Support Service and to your passion for people looking after themselves and each other, particularly regarding mental health.

How did you get through all those times?

Curtis: Back in 2020, there was a global pandemic.

I don’t know whether any of your listeners would remember that, but there was a global pandemic, and we also needed to move our pharmacy.

Our whole shopping centre was being renovated.

We moved to temporary premises on 29 March 2020, and then had about five months to build a new pharmacy, which we moved into on 9 September.

For anybody who hasn’t done it, getting the approvals for a pharmacy and trying to design a pharmacy you know is going to cost an awful lot of money is incredibly challenging.

We needed to take out some significant loans, and you don’t know whether the workflow will function as you planned it.

We visited friends and colleagues all over the place to learn what we could.

We then had to design a pharmacy to fit the space offered by our landlord and obtain all the required approvals.

Our business was in Emerton, a low socioeconomic area.

That means there are many people receiving Centrelink benefits, so the vast majority of our business was PBS-related.

If we missed the approval and couldn’t claim from Medicare, we would lose well over two-thirds of our business until it was rectified.

The pressure was right up here - you can’t see this on a podcast, but it was right up here - and then something went wrong.

It doesn’t really matter what that something was.

It might have been that a staff member was hurt and we would need workers’ compensation representatives to come in and reassess our processes.

It could have been that a significant amount of money went missing and we were going to struggle to pay our bills.

It could have been that a lot of stock was damaged and needed replacing.

Any one of dozens of things can happen.

It wasn’t about that single event. It was about everything that led up to it, which meant I simply couldn’t cope at that point.

I knew I was spiralling.

I couldn’t think about anything except this one problem, even though I had all these other things I needed to do.

I couldn’t sleep, and I wasn’t eating properly. Anybody who knows me knows I love my food.

I knew I needed to reach out for help again.

It wasn’t the first time I had made an appointment with a psychologist or sat in a room describing the problems I was having, so I knew that was where I needed to go.

On 9 September 2020, when we opened our pharmacy, I was there in my shiny boots, which I had polished the day before, and a starched white uniform.

My lovely wife was standing next to me as we opened what was the newest and, in our view, one of the best pharmacies in the country.

The next day was my first appointment with my psychologist.

I was simultaneously on an absolute high and almost as low as I had ever been, because I knew I needed to reach out for help.

In the past, I had also been a tutor for medical students.

One of the tutorials we ran was about peer support, mental health and dealing with the ups and downs life throws at you.

I realised I needed this help.

Getting through it was difficult.

The team had opened the pharmacy with us on 9 September.

On 10 September, I went for the appointment at about midday. Everybody said to me, “Don’t come back. Take the afternoon off.”

As difficult as that was, they knew I needed that time.

I went to the appointment with the psychologist and started the process.

For anybody who hasn’t been to a psychologist before, that first appointment can feel like a real waste of time.

I spoke for 50 minutes and received nothing - no advice, no tools, nothing.

It’s during the second or third appointment that they know you well enough to help you name what’s going wrong and offer strategies for dealing with it.

Anybody contemplating that, or who might need that support in the future, should realise that the first appointment may not feel particularly useful.

However, you need to build a foundation, just as you need to build a foundation before you can build a great house or another building.

That was really difficult.

Krysti-Lee, if I can go back to one more point: we moved our pharmacy on 29 March 2020.

I remember one day in particular - 18 March 2020 - when we were working harder than we had ever worked before.

I was standing at the front of the pharmacy, acting as a concierge and trying to tell people that we could see them, that we were working very hard and that it wouldn’t take too much longer.

If you had come into the pharmacy, I would have said, “Krysti-Lee, we’ve got your prescription and we’re working on it.”

I would then speak to the dispensary and say, “Yes, Margaret is working on your prescription.”

Margaret would know she was preparing a prescription for somebody waiting in the pharmacy.

You would know that somebody in the dispensary was working on your prescription and that you had been seen.

They would know they were doing work that mattered right then.

The stress was incredible, and we all remember that.

I remember Margaret saying to the dispensary team, “Stop. Everybody take a breath. This is not our emergency.”

“What’s important is that we do this once and do it right. The people out the front will just have to wait, but they will be okay waiting if we get it right for them.”

I watched every staff member in that dispensary take a deep breath, straighten themselves up and realise they needed to do the job well rather than simply do it quickly.

That was probably the greatest single act of leadership I have seen.

Margaret was able to take that time out, recognise what was happening and verbalise it to the team.

We watched them take a deep breath and realise that, yes, it was stressful, but it would be okay and we would get through it together.

That’s one of the things I enjoyed most about being a pharmacy owner - being side by side with our team, having them support us and knowing we were supporting them as well.

Krysti-Lee: Everyone likes to know that somebody has their back, right?

You mentioned that in relation to your business partner, but it’s especially important during stressful times.

You need to be able to trust that the rest of the team has your back, and vice versa, and be able to communicate with them.

Those are the two key things I took from that story.

Margaret being able to articulate that clearly to the team was really important in that situation.

Curtis: It was.

It helped us define how we got through those early days of COVID-19, when we didn’t even know what being safe looked like.

Krysti-Lee: That’s so true.

I just had a flashback to that period because it is very clear in my mind.

I moved to Sydney on 12 March 2020.

I was moving from a frontline community pharmacist role into a head-office support role.

When it came to communication, we had sent information to all our stores saying that they should close their clinic rooms or consultation rooms.

In my mind, that meant closing the door and not using the room.

One particular pharmacy went and got black-and-yellow tape and put a large cross across the door. They also put up a sign saying, “Do not enter.”

I’m doing the movement now, but I know people listening to the podcast can’t see it.

It was a bit like, “Whoa!”

I was imagining people walking around wearing gas masks.

Communication is important, as is making sure the team understands it and that everyone is on the same page.

We received feedback from stores saying, “The team from head office said we have to close our consultation rooms.”

At no point did I say they had to get black-and-yellow hazard tape and put it across the doors.

They thought they were doing the right thing, and they were trying to do the right thing, but it caused more panic than was necessary.

Curtis, for the people who haven’t met you and don’t know what you look like, we’ll put a headshot in the podcast show notes.

I hope you don’t mind me saying that you probably fit the description of an older white male.

I find it interesting that, when you talked about those periods in your life when you needed support, you went and sought that support.

Would I be right in saying that is unusual for people in similar situations?

I’m stereotyping here, but it isn’t necessarily something men would traditionally do.

I think we still have a long way to go regarding men’s mental health.

Do you have any thoughts or comments on that?

Curtis: Yes, for sure.

When I took somebody into a consultation room as they were starting antidepressants, I would give them a little of my story.

I would say, “Your doctor has probably asked you to reach out to a psychologist or counsellor.”

Then I would point to myself and say, “You might be surprised by the people you think have their act together who actually need to speak to somebody to keep their act together.”

They would look at me quite blankly, as though they were seeing me for the first time.

It’s a truism that our world was designed by older white men for the benefit of other older white men. That’s how our world has been designed.

If I’m struggling, anybody can struggle.

I don’t deal with racism. I don’t deal with sexism or ageism.

I don’t have family and domestic violence eating into the core of my being. I don’t have any of that, and yet I have struggled.

I struggled at a time when I was putting together my dream.

To build your own home or design your own workplace is a dream for many of us.

That was the point at which I was struggling - when I was flying in some aspects of life and absolutely plumbing the depths, as I never had before, at the same time.

That’s why I talk so openly about what I do.

I want people to have the vocabulary to understand and describe how they feel.

If you can describe it, it isn’t nearly as scary as saying, “I don’t know why I feel like this.”

Krysti-Lee: I agree.

Sometimes you can’t articulate why you feel a certain way, but you can describe the feelings.

That’s a good takeaway for people to remember.

Curtis: Through the pharmacy, we were involved with an alcohol and other drugs service called Marrin Weejali.

One of the participants there, who is now a social and emotional wellbeing counsellor, has a superpower.

She can describe how she is feeling, what she does to help herself, and what she does that sabotages herself and her plans.

That strength - being able to recognise those things and verbalise them openly in front of other people - is something I truly admire and have tried to emulate.

I’m not her, but I would like to think I can provide a little of that for the people I come into contact with.

Being there and experiencing that with people at Marrin Weejali has been a wonderful part of my development as a pharmacist.

Krysti-Lee: We’ve talked about how you recently sold the business, but what are you doing now?

What does day-to-day life look like for Curtis post-ownership?

Curtis: At the moment, I’m catching up on a lot of things I let go while we were in a full-time-plus role managing a busy community pharmacy.

I miss the team we had in the pharmacy.

We’ve had limited contact with them, but not much, which is probably appropriate.

They need to gel as a team with the new owners.

I’m now looking to see what else I can do.

The things that got me out of bed over the last five years include harm minimisation, mental health for health practitioners, cultural safety, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health, and how pharmacists can help people experiencing family and domestic violence or coercive control.

Those are the areas I’d like to lean into over the next few years.

You and I share a passion for addressing family and domestic violence and coercive control.

I’d like to say to anybody in the middle of that at the moment that what you’re experiencing is not your fault.

There are people out there. We see you, we hear you and, most importantly, we believe you.

Being in the middle of family and domestic violence or coercive control can be a very isolating experience.

Part of what is happening to you is intended to isolate you, but you are not alone.

That brings me to the Pharmacists’ Support Service as well.

PSS was established in 1995 with the idea that pharmacists should not feel alone.

There is a team of volunteers available from 8.00 am to 11.00 pm Australian Eastern Daylight Time.

We follow Hobart, Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney time, 365 days of the year.

These people have completed additional training, such as Mental Health First Aid, in their own time.

They are unpaid volunteers.

The service is anonymous, and they are there for pharmacists, interns and pharmacy students who may be having their worst day ever and need to talk to somebody who understands what it’s like to be us.

That could mean being a student, or being an intern trying to work through an intern training program, complete their hours and pay their rent, or whatever else they need to do.

Being able to talk to a colleague who understands is what PSS is there for.

That’s why it’s so important and why I’m so proud to be involved with PSS and be there for people.

That’s slightly off topic from the question you asked, but I’m looking for work where I, as an individual pharmacist, can help us as a profession in those areas.

That might include harm minimisation, family and domestic violence, cultural safety, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health, or anything we can use to advocate for our profession and better support the communities we serve.

Krysti-Lee: Curtis, I want to pick up on a point you mentioned about harm minimisation.

It’s clearly an area that is important to you.

Is that something you focused on in the pharmacy?

I haven’t mentioned it yet, but your pharmacy won two national Pharmacy Guild awards in 2024.

One was Harm Minimisation Pharmacy of the Year and the other was Excellence in Community Engagement.

From a harm minimisation perspective, the first thing that comes to mind is opioid substitution therapy, but I know it’s much more than that.

Curtis: It certainly is.

Harm minimisation covers everything from nicotine replacement therapy - so we’re all involved in harm minimisation when we help people quit smoking - through to education, whether that’s provided at an alcohol and other drugs service such as Marrin Weejali or within the pharmacy.

It can also involve things shared on the pharmacy’s Facebook or Instagram pages.

Krysti-Lee: From the work you and the team did in the pharmacy around harm minimisation, was that something you did purposely to become Pharmacy of the Year?

I’m sure every pharmacy, at some point, has thought it was deserving of a Pharmacy of the Year award.

There are around 6,000 pharmacies, though, so it’s very competitive.

Curtis: The harm minimisation award didn’t exist until 2024, so our pharmacy was the inaugural winner.

We had put so much in place before that, so it definitely wasn’t done to chase the award.

With harm minimisation, we became involved with Marrin Weejali.

Initially, it was me trying to advocate for our profession.

I’m sure that everybody there would cross paths with a pharmacist at some point.

I wanted them to let me be involved so they could realise that we were actually on their side.

When we were looking forward to the pharmacy refit, we visited a lot of pharmacies, some of which had been named Pharmacy of the Year.

As we learned from them, we realised that what we were putting together could potentially become Pharmacy of the Year.

However, we put it together because that was what we wanted to do and how we wanted to practise, not because we were chasing awards.

For these awards, you have to put yourself forward or somebody has to nominate you.

You then have to do a lot of background work to prove to the judges that you’re worthy of it.

There is work involved in promoting what you have done.

However, that wasn’t the guiding principle behind either our community engagement or harm minimisation work.

We were trying to make ourselves more useful to our community, be where they needed us to be and enjoy our days.

Any day I got to walk into Marrin Weejali, I walked a little taller when I left.

Marrin Weejali is one of my happy places, and I love being able to contribute there.

Krysti-Lee: You mentioned family and domestic violence.

We’ve had several conversations about this, where pharmacists fit and whether we should even be doing something in this space.

I think it’s appropriate for me to share why I’m so passionate about it.

One moment stands out to me.

There is a program that still operates today called DV-alert.

It is free, government-funded domestic and family violence response training.

It provides training for frontline healthcare workers.

You can complete it online, trainers can come to your pharmacy, or, if you’re in a metropolitan area, you can attend a training event.

It is all free, and we’ll put a link in the show notes.

I’m passionate about this because, when I was a pharmacist-in-charge and pharmacy manager, I was very young - only about 25 or 26.

I was managing staff members who were experiencing family and domestic violence themselves, or whose family members were experiencing it.

They disclosed this to me, and I didn’t know what to do.

I wasn’t equipped to deal with it.

Anyone in a management position should complete management training because you soon realise that management isn’t just telling people what to do and keeping them on task.

You almost become a psychologist or counsellor, and we’re not trained for that.

I wanted to do something to help the team understand.

The other aspect was that a patient came in and, during a conversation about her antidepressant in a consultation room, disclosed that she was experiencing domestic and family violence.

At the time, I didn’t know what to do or where to direct her for help.

Curtis: Exactly.

As we’ve discussed, DV-alert is amazing, but it’s aimed at social care workers or other care workers who may visit somebody and spend 25 to 45 minutes with their clients.

We might get one minute with our patients, but we get that one minute every week, twice a week or every third week.

It’s a different relationship.

If we handle a disclosure poorly, we can make that person less safe rather than safer.

That’s why it’s so good that there is now some training aimed at pharmacists.

There is training on GuildEd and the PSA website, but it’s really just a start.

There is so much more we need to do.

Another useful resource, which we can put in the show notes, is a podcast called Small Business, Big Impact, hosted by Gretel Killeen.

It’s a 10-part podcast aimed at helping employers understand their responsibilities after paid family and domestic violence leave was introduced.

The podcast was released a year or so ago, and it’s fantastic.

Each episode is about 25 minutes, so they’re nice, bite-sized pieces.

It discusses not only supporting somebody who is experiencing family and domestic violence, but also what to do if your team member is the person using violence.

It talks about how to broach that situation as well.

I highly recommend that podcast.

I’d like to think there is more we can do, but it relies on having the time, space and money to do it.

That’s something I’d like to be involved in.

If somebody is looking to do that, find me and let’s talk.

Krysti-Lee: Absolutely. Let’s talk.

Curtis, we’ve come to the end of the podcast.

Before we go through our Rapid Fire Five, is there anything in particular you want to share with our listeners that we haven’t covered?

The Rapid Fire Five is a new section of the podcast. I’ll ask you five questions, and you have to answer them quickly.

Curtis: Not really. I think we’ve covered most things.

The main message is that you’re not alone.

So much of what I’ve done has been done with me at the front, but I have never done this alone.

Even in 2020, when I was struggling my most and about to reach out to a psychologist, I had a friend, Georgina Woods, who would check in on me every couple of weeks.

She understood what it was like to be a pharmacy owner and knew me well enough to ring and check in.

I try to do that for some of my friends as well.

I know that when I reach out to somebody else, I also get a lift.

We know from work that Jenny Kirschner has done with PALs and loneliness that simply reaching out to somebody else can make us feel less lonely.

That’s what I want people to take away: you’re never alone.

Krysti-Lee: Again, that’s a great piece of advice and wisdom.

It’s time for our Rapid Fire Five.

The first question is: What is the best piece of advice you have ever received, or that you have given to somebody else?

Curtis: The best piece of advice I’ve ever received was, “How big a mistake is is determined by how long you keep making it.”

Often, we realise we’re on the wrong path, but we hope we can turn it around.

Sometimes, what we need to do is turn away from it.

That advice came from John Rossi, who was a representative who used to visit the pharmacy.

It’s something I’ve used when we’ve needed a reset.

Krysti-Lee: Question two: What is one thing every pharmacist should have in their self-care toolkit?

Curtis: I’m going to give you two.

When we’re not at work, it’s something that takes us out of our heads.

That might be craft, exercise, gardening, music, dancing, Netflix or whatever that looks like for you.

It should be something completely different from work.

If you’re married to your work partner, that’s even more important.

At work, it’s the ability to recognise and name how you’re feeling, as we discussed earlier.

Being able to name it is critical.

Krysti-Lee: Question three: What is something you wish pharmacy students knew now?

Curtis: Peer support, just as we were discussing a few minutes ago.

It’s the ability to check in with themselves and each other.

I know people are working on this in pharmacy schools, and I sincerely thank them for it.

The ability for pharmacy students to offer genuine peer support would be wonderful.

Krysti-Lee: Question four: What is the one thing you’re most proud of when you look back at your time as a community pharmacist to date?

Curtis: This isn’t really answering the question, but it was our team.

With them, we could do anything.

To answer the question directly, I’d say our work in harm minimisation.

We weren’t the best, but we learned from others as we went along, and we did it because it felt like the right thing to do.

I’ve heard that the opposite of addiction is connection.

I certainly learned that at Marrin Weejali and in our pharmacy.

That connection with people was critical for us.

Krysti-Lee: The last question is a cheeky one.

What is the Pharmacists’ Support Service phone number, and who should call it?

Curtis: It’s 1300 244 910.

Any pharmacy student, intern pharmacist or registered pharmacist can call between 8.00 am and 11.00 pm, Hobart, Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney time, 365 days a year.

You will speak to an experienced volunteer pharmacist who has chosen to give their time to be on the other end of the line for you.

Krysti-Lee: Curtis, thank you so much for taking the time to chat today.

It has been great getting to know you better and hearing your reflections on your career to date.

Curtis: Fantastic. Thanks so much for your time, Krysti-Lee.

Thanks for tuning in to Your Pharmacy Career Podcast.

Proudly sponsored by the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia. The PSA is committed to empowering pharmacists through advocacy, innovation and industry-leading professional development. To become a member or learn more about how the PSA can support your career, visit www.psa.org.au.

Don’t forget to subscribe, share this podcast with your colleagues and join us next time as we continue to explore your pharmacy career journey.