Linda Johnston, a teacher of Community Pharmacy at Coffs Harbour TAFE Campus, is the one of the first vocational education teachers in NSW to be approved as a Right Way Trainer and Assessor.

The Right Way is an initiative of Service Skills Australia (SSA), one of 11 industry skills councils funded by the Australian Government to support skills development.

Service Skills Australia is a comprehensive source of expert, independent advice for industry, training organisations and employees, students and jobseekers about skills development in the service industries.

The Right Way program is part of Service Skills Australia’s strategic work to achieve quality skills outcomes throughout the service industries, focussing on three key areas:

• quality training and assessment facilities
• quality trainers and assessors
• quality learning resources

Ms Johnston said “Participants in this industry recognition system must adhere to standards and provide evidence of quality through an application and assessment process operated by SSA.  The process was a lot like a job interview, with a lot of preparation required to satisfy an Independent assessor against SSA’s very high criteria”.

Head Teacher Ms Trish field said, “Linda puts a huge effort into maintaining and developing a very high standard of Community Pharmacy Training for our students, as well as their employer pharmacies”.

“Linda has been instrumental in providing professional development opportunities for our local pharmacies, co-ordinating a recent seminar with SSA where pharmacy managers were able to gain the latest information on, and provide input into the development of new training packages for Community Pharmacy, as well as asthma care workshops for pharmacists where the latest care equipment was demonstrated by the Asthma Foundation”.