Celebrating over 50 years of contributing to pharmacy and community wellbeing

Tasmanian pharmacist, Ian Huett, was recently awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2024 Tasmanian Pharmacist of the Year awards for his dedication and leadership in the pharmacy profession.

As a fourth-generation Deloraine resident, the delivery of genuinely loving and supportive customer care was strongly engrained in Ian Huett, Amcal+ Deloraine and Deloraine Guardian Pharmacy owner, from an early age.

Early Career

Ian’s pharmacy career started as a student in Hobart, followed by an internship at Elliot’s Pharmacy in his hometown, Deloraine in 1970.  It was the time of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Hollies and Bob Dylan. Ian bought a half-share in the local pharmacy just six weeks after registration in January 1971.

Pharmacy was different back in the 1970s – scripts were hand-written into large script books and indexed by patient, medicine labels were hand-typed and affixed to containers, and compounding included veterinary medicines for their predominantly rural community.  Ian recalled an electric dispensary hot plate located in his dispensary to heat drums of soft and liquid paraffin combined with sulphanilamide powder to produce cow udder cream as well as veterinary penicillin to treat mastitis in cows, specially prepared potassium iodide drenches for cattle’s Woody Tongue disease and other similar products.

“Transitioning from an agricultural rural-focused pharmacy of the 1970s to a constantly evolving professional services-driven scope of practice has been an exciting and fulfilling journey”, Ian said. Fast forward 50 years, pharmacy practice has changed dramatically with an emphasis more on providing a holistic patient-centric clinical practice including patient aids, MedsCheck, HMR, vaccinations, and general clinical interventions.

While early career pharmacists today are faced with different challenges than when Ian started out, rural community pharmacists have an opportunity to become embedded into their local community, deliver a level of caring, personal and consistent professional customer service, and develop their professional growth and character as a respected community leader.

Lifetime Achievement Award

As a longtime community pharmacist, Guild member, and former member practitioner of the Pharmacy Board of Australia, Ian has provided outstanding service, support, advice and medications to generations of families in the wider Deloraine community for over 50+ years.

On receiving his Lifetime Achievement Award, Ian said “Our family have been richly blessed in the profession serving our community and I want to use my small, rural town, pharmacist’s experience to encourage my younger peers to be aware that they too can have an exciting professional journey, serving their local community in so many mutually rewarding ways.” Ian remarked to younger pharmacists, “You may not realise it, but you have chosen a great, rewarding and satisfying career.”

Congratulations Ian on your Lifetime Achievement Award and 50+ years of dedicated service to your profession and local community.

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