Former IPU President Daragh Connolly was recently presented with a prestigious FIP Fellowship Award, at their 2024 Congress meeting in South Africa. FIP is the International Pharmaceutical Federation, the global body for pharmacy, of which the IPU is a member. The Fellowship Award is designed to “recognise individual members of FIP who have exhibited strong leadership internationally, who have distinguished themselves in the pharmaceutical sciences and/or practice of pharmacy, who have contributed to the advancement of the pharmaceutical sciences and/or practice of pharmacy, and who have served FIP.”

Mr Connolly has over 25 years’ experience as a community pharmacist and has worked both at home and abroad in shaping healthcare policy and regulations. His advocacy has helped to maintain and expand access to healthcare, including new services such as pharmacist-led prescribing of emergency hormonal contraception.  As President of the FIP community pharmacy section he was co-author of the international report Workforce sustainability and supporting positive practice in community pharmacy. Mr Connolly is currently Chair of the FIP Board of Pharmacy Practice.

Your role as the lead author on FIP’s Vision 2025 document was cited for your Fellowship. Tell us about this document?

I have been very fortunate to work with great community pharmacists in Ireland and from around the world. As lead author of the FIP community pharmacy section’s Vision 2025, I helped frame the four pillars of ‘Essential Pharmacy Care’, Review, Prescribe, Dispense and Administer — we Review medicines, we Prescribe medicines, we Dispense medicines and we Administer medicines.

Pharmacists do their best for the communities they serve when they are empowered to do all four pillars to the peak of the scope of their license to practice. By doing so, we create choice and access to healthcare and in turn have a more involved and satisfied profession. The key tenet of the document from a policy and advocacy perspective is to highlight our potential but also emphasise that as we expand our scope into Prescribe and Administer, we cannot ignore Review and Dispense — which is to say each must be properly remunerated. This will have a particular resonance for Irish pharmacists as we find ourselves making these exact arguments to our Government.

The FIP Fellowship Award is bestowed in recognition of the international leadership you have demonstrated. How do international pharmacy organisations benefit Irish community pharmacists?

No two countries’ healthcare systems are the same and no two countries practice community pharmacy in the same way. The IPU cannot work in isolation and needs to measure itself against its peers. International pharmacy organisations help us to do so at an international, regional and local level.

We can observe similarities in our core competencies of Review, Prescribe, Dispense and Administer, but the real value of having an international perspective is to learn where other countries have progressed in advancing patient care through pharmacy and how we can apply them at home. The IPU also shares its learnings as a Member Organisation and makes FIP a stronger organisation through its membership and collegiality. FIP is strongly connected to WHO and as we advocate for better services for Irish people and their pharmacists, we can show how we align with international best practice and the future of universal healthcare around the globe. A member organisation can only be relevant if it can learn from and contribute to international best practice. The IPU is and always has been a relevant and forward-looking organisation and has gained and contributed greatly from our decades long association with FIP. I am proud to represent the IPU and Irish community pharmacists at its top table.

Finally, tell us about your own life in pharmacy?

I have been around the block! I could never have imagined as a 19-year-old in my first day of pharmacy school that the journey would have brought me such a varied career. I love being a pharmacist and I count myself very fortunate to have been able to serve my profession at a local, regional, national and now international level. I have made great friends and never had a dull moment. There have been ups and downs for pharmacy over the years and it is inevitable there will be more to come. We have all shared those ups and downs through our careers but a constant I have seen is the genuine sense of service and a willingness to develop professionally from the vast majority of pharmacists. We are part of a proud and centuries old profession, which has survived and thrived because we embrace change and new challenges in order to serve and be relevant.

The research work that I am currently involved in is to help write the next FIP vision for community pharmacy. To date, our research has found that around the world pharmacists love being pharmacists and are positive about the sustainability of our profession. Like in Ireland, they feel they spend too much of their time doing the wrong things and not enough time where they excel, helping people get the most from their medicines and health. We are not the finished article yet in Ireland, but I know that we are light years ahead of most countries. This is in no little part due to the fantastic service we provide day in and day out, and our ability to offer solutions to our healthcare system. Our latest expansion of scope of practice is the envy of most of our peers. These advances were hard won by a generation of pharmacists in the IPU, and I am very proud to have played my part through my time on Committees and as President. I am glad to be able to have a varied and fascinating career in Dungarvan and further afield. I look forward to new challenges, wherever they come from.

“We are part of a proud and centuries old profession, which has survived and thrived because we embrace change and new challenges in order to serve and be relevant.”