St Vincent's Hospital
St Vincent's Pharmacy Services
The St Vincent's Pharmacy Services team has approximately 80 EFT; including pharmacists, pharmacy technicians and support staff. Pharmacy services at St Vincent's are decentralised; providing services from nine pharmacy locations spread across the campus within medical, surgical and speciality patient treatment areas. Our focus is to provide the best patient care and to deliver the best patient outcomes. We are committed to our values of compassion, justice, integrity and excellence.
Our clinical pharmacy team plays a pivotal role within the multidisciplinary health care team, delivering care in a patient-centric manner, with a strong focus on evidence-based practice and medication safety. In addition to services provided on inpatient wards, we also offer care via ambulatory/outpatient services, aseptic manufacturing, oncology production and day unit, medicines information, quality use of medicines (QUM), medication safety, antimicrobial stewardship, emergency medicine, partnered pharmacist medication charting, clinical trials, clinical informatics, psychiatry, correctional services, St. Vincent’s on the Park services, hospital in the home, clinical governance of the Alaris® infusion pump dataset system, clinical governance of Mosaic® cancer care management system, and continuous quality improvement and practice research.
We're committed to providing exceptional levels of undergraduate and postgraduate pharmacist training, together with comprehensive support programs for intern pharmacists and life-long teaching and education for our broader pharmacy team. One of the ways St Vincent's Pharmacy Services achieve this is via site-based training and SHPA ClinCAT review to ensure competency of staff and safety for our patients.
Opportunities exist for young pharmacists to undertake a post-registration two-year residency program. Our residency program is aligned with the core principles of the SHPA residency curriculum and includes; surgical, operations, medical and elective rotations. The department is also involved with the education of medical, nursing and allied health staff.
The hospital has many specialist areas, including:
Cardiology and cardiothoracic surgery, dermatology, endocrinology, gastroenterology, microsurgery, oncology, haematology, psychiatry, stroke, renal medicine including kidney transplantation, orthopaedic surgery, emergency medicine, intensive care, respiratory medicine, vascular, rehabilitation, immunology, biliary-lithotripsy, home medicines review, correctional health, addiction medicine, infectious diseases and neurosciences.
Intern program information
Seven intern positions are available in 2025. The pre-registrant program at St Vincent's aims to provide a solid foundation and to facilitate a strong transition to practice as a skilled clinical pharmacists. Our interns are based at the Fitzroy campus. They also complete a one week rotation at St.George’s Hospital in Kew.
Campuses at which pharmacy interns will work:
- St Vincent's Hospital – St Vincent's Hospital provides a wide range of medical, surgical, allied health and mental health services, including community, outreach, drug and alcohol and correctional health services. We are also a leading health care provider to Aboriginal patients for metropolitan Melbourne. As a major teaching, research and tertiary referral centre, we are committed to providing the best possible patient care, servicing both our local and regional communities. The hospital is situated in Fitzroy on the fringe of Melbourne's central business district, bounded by Victoria Parade, Nicholson Street, Fitzroy Street and Gertrude Street.
- St George's Hospital – St George's Health Service located at 283 Cotham road, Kew provides a comprehensive aged care service, including inpatient care, evaluation and management, residential aged care, rehabilitation, acute psychiatry, as well as a broad range of community-based assessment and treatment services.
- St.Vincent’s on the Park - St Vincent's Hospital on the Park is the newest addition to St Vincent's Hospital Melbourne, providing same-day surgical services to patients. It is located at 11 Cathedral Place, East Melbourne.
Every intern undergoes a one-week orientation and induction to St Vincent's Pharmacy Services. Following this the Intern Pharmacist rotations include:
- Clinical ward areas including: General Medicine (3-week rotation), cardiology and cardiothoracic unit (3-week rotation), neurology and nephrology (3-week rotation), gastroenterology (2-week rotation), psychiatry (1-week rotation), orthopaedic unit (3-week rotation), aged care (1-week rotation to St. George's Hospital Campus), emergency medicine (3-week rotation), intensive care (1- week rotation) and antimicrobial stewardship (1-week rotation).
- Dispensary (3-week rotation)
- Aseptic preparations (3-week rotation)
- Medication safety / Medicines information (3-week rotation).
NB: some rotations repeat throughout the year. (See sample 2024 Intern workplace roster below)
Education and training
Weekly Tutorials:
- The education program comprises of weekly intern education meetings. A range of clinical topics are covered. Clinical pharmacists who specialise in areas covered or interns (cover OTC topics that are allocated at the beginning of the year for update of our in-house OTC booklet) present during these sessions (see sample 2024 Intern tutorial roster below).
Practice Exams:
- Multiple practice exams are provided during the year to help interns prepare for exams; these include both written and oral exams.
Intern Foundation Program:
- St Vincent's is accredited to offer the Intern Foundation Program (IFP). Currently, all seven 2024 pharmacist interns are participating in this program.
Practice Research & Innovation
- Each intern will develop research and innovation skills by doing a practice-based research project. The St Vincent's Pharmacy team will meet to help identify and assist intern pharmacists with these research projects.
If you would like to join a team that seeks to drive innovative change in the pharmacy profession while raising your career to new heights, take the first step by contacting us for more information. See below for contact details. We look forward to hearing from you. If you are unable to attend our webinar, please contact us for a recorded copy of the webinar to be made available to you.
Supervised hours and week-end work
- Interns commence their hours in January. The regular weekday hours are 8am to 4.45pm (if working in the clinical areas) and 8.30am to 5.30pm when rostered to work in the outpatient department area. Each intern will also do a Saturday morning shift every 7 weeks. Saturday morning shift hours are 9am to 1pm (or until the work is finished). One or two public holiday shifts are also worked.
Information Session
TBC
Contacts
Erini Mathiopoulos, Intern Co-ordinator
9231 2844
Andrew Cording, Chief Pharmacist
9231 4172
Helen Dixon, Deputy Chief Pharmacist
9231 4173
Intern positions in 2025
- 7 total (7 DHHS funded)