You are on this page because you are a South African registered pharmacist and are looking to migrate to Australia.
In 2001 about 1000 pharmacy students graduated from South Africa; in the same year, 600 pharmacists emigrated abroad. The majority migrate to either Canada or Australia. The main cohort of South African pharmacists that migrate to Australian shores go to Western Australia and end up in big cities such as Perth, Bunbury or Albany.
Below we will look at the individual stages of the migration process.
Steps to migrate to Australia…
- Validate your pharmacist degree – you first need to know whether your degree would be acceptable in Australia, this is done by requesting an eligibility assessment by APC (Australian Pharmacy Council). For this you would need:
- Personal identification (original and valid passport and passport size photograph that was taken in the last 6 months).
- Academic qualifications (certificate of the original title in pharmacy and original academic record).
- Evidence of registration (initial registration as a pharmacist in your country of origin and an official letter confirming your professional status in your country of origin).
- Work experience (curriculum vitae and original work reference templates).
- Once the documents described have been sent you will have to pay $ 1.190 AUD as a fee for your evaluation.
- Get a visa to work – this is issued by the Australian Department of Immigration and Border Protection. Occasionally this process becomes easier if the government decides to list Pharmacists in their nominated program via Skillselect (as of 2020 this is not the case).
- Criminal history check – you will need to go to the APHRA website where you will need to receive a certificate which you will need to submit to the APC.
- Australian Pharmacy Council (APC) – as you are not coming from the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada or the United States of America you will need to proceed through Stream A.
- Supervised practice – once you have passed the exam, you will have to do a supervised internship period to be able to request general registration as a pharmacist in Australia. Candidates in section A will have to do a longer internship period than section B.
What wage should you expect as licensed pharmacist in Australia?
Australian pharmacists are listed in our top 10 countries for highest pharmacist wage. In fact, they list as having the third-highest wage in the world for pharmacists, just behind the US as no.1 and Iceland as no.2. For more information have a look at our top 10 pharmacist salary article.