Editors' Welcome: The Future is Bright

We welcome you to the Australian Pharmacy Students' Jounal (APSJ) Summer Issue 2024. The theme of the issue is "The Future is Bright". Pharmacists are the medication experts in our healthcare system. In the past, their roles have been limited mainly to community and hospital pharmacy, however, over time, we have seen advancements of pharmacists being placed into new settings to align with the idea that pharmacists should be wherever there are medicines. This was seen through the progression of pharmacists working in residential aged care facilities (RACFs) and General Practitioner (GP) clinics. This expansion of the pharmacists’ role within the community has highlighted the level of expertise they possess. Nowadays, a number of changes are occurring in Australia, ranging from the Queensland Community Pharmacy Scope of Practice pilot, partnered pharmacist charting, vaccinations, and Tasmanian aged care prescribing to name a few. With changes comes growth and opportunities. The future holds great potential for students, as they are in the perfect place to witness where the pharmacy profession is headed. This is the message we want to convey in this issue: the future of pharmacy has never looked so bright, and we are excited to be a part of this journey. We proudly present a total of 12 pieces, including two editorials, three feature articles, three original research articles, three opinion pieces and one letter. They were written by students and interns across Australia, Canada and United Kingdom. This issue is the result of months of hard work that would not have been possible without the endless support of our APSJ Academic Advisory Board. We would like to thank our amazing team of associate editors, copyeditors and publications officer for their work in this issue. We wouldalso like to thank all the academic and student reviewers who contributed to this issue, thus helping the Journal flourish during its early years of publication. To all the authors who published in this issue, we would like to congratulate you and thank you for your never-ending trust. We would also like to acknowledge the support of our strategic partner, the Society of Hospital Pharmacists of Australia (SHPA) and the support of the Australasian Pharmaceutical Science Association (APSA). As we finalise our first editorial, we would like to reflect on our student journey and the opportunities that the APSJ offers, being the first peer-reviewed pharmacy students’ journal in the world. As Co-Editors-in-Chief, we stand behind the APSJ’s motto “A Journal Created By Students, For Students”, and would like to invite you to partake in its journey.