Blog

August 20, 2021

Speaking to Pharmacist Amanda Seeto about her Career and experience with the RUM Project

Amanda Seeto is an established Pharmacist, National Councillor with the Pharmacy Guild, and now active member of the Board of Directors for the RUM Project. We recently (virtually) sat down with Amanda, to hear about her career, her experience with the RUM project, and what a typical day in her life looks like.

Tell us about your career so far and what’s lead you to become a member of the RUM board?

I am a community pharmacist & pharmacy owner with 20 years of experience in the industry.  Most of my time these days is spent working at Good Price Pharmacy Support Office in the role of Pharmacy Practice Support. I have been a Branch Committee member of the Pharmacy Guild of Australia, Queensland Branch for 7 years, am a member of a pharmacy advisory group for Glaucoma Australia and also provide input into pharmacists’ role in embedding digital health into pharmacy practice.  More recently, I have been elected as a National Councillor with the Pharmacy Guild, and from this, I was offered the opportunity to be the Guild’s representative on the RUM board, a position I gladly accepted.

Can you describe a typical day in your working life?

As a Practice Support Pharmacist, I oversee the dispensary operations of the pharmacies in our group, providing advice and support in changes to legislation, regulatory compliance, workflow & efficiency, implementing and streamlining services, medicines safety and pharmacist wellbeing.  I really enjoy the challenge of this role as it is across a diverse range of pharmacies in metro and regional areas, different State jurisdictions, each with their own mix of staff, floor space and patient demographic.

What inspires you to work with the RUM project?

I believe that the service that the RUM project offers to the community is so important in the role of medicines safety.  Patients need a method to dispose of medicines that is easy, accessible and at no cost.  Community pharmacies are an ideal location to be the drop-off point for unwanted medicines – they are accessed by consumers on average 18 times a year, there is a trusted pharmacist to hand the medicines to, who is always available to answer questions about medicines.  The RUM project also serves to keep unwanted medicines out of our waterways, an environmental hazard issue that would be much worse without RUM.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

My personal experience in pharmacy with the RUM project has been the conversations that have started with patients when they have brought in their medicines for disposal – discussing their recovery from an illness as they happily hand over medicines no longer required, laughing over a 20 year old cough medicine, or fondly remembering a loved one who has recently passed away.

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