The President of the HPAI, Mr Richard Sykes, expressed his delight at the Association’s Annual Clinical Conference 2026 and the impressive turnout, which builds year-on-year. Speaking to Irish Pharmacist (IP) at the event, he also spoke about the exceptionally high standard of content from contributors and speakers. “Once again, I am constantly surprised at how packed our agenda is and it really reflects the expanding roles of hospital pharmacists and the complexity of the work,” he
said. “It covers a wide range of activities relevant to the changes that we see in the health system at the moment.”
He identified some of the most impactful changes that the profession has seen in recent years: “We have the shake-up of the HSE, moving towards regional models of care, and also
within our own profession, we have our career structure and the creation of the Advanced Specialist Pharmacist role,” said Mr Sykes. “Finally, after many years of negotiation with the HSE, this finally gives recognition to pharmacists that they can specialise in various areas. They have been doing that for years, but this is formal recognition, from their employer, that they are working at a certain level.
“We are lucky to have more than 230 Advanced Specialist Pharmacists coming on-stream this year and a lot of the presentations at this conference are by people who are in those roles, or are looking to get into those roles, and it’s all about developing care for our patients.”
Mr Sykes was also asked what he might say to encourage young pharmacists and trainees to enter a career in hospital pharmacy. “Hospital pharmacy offers perfect opportunities to get really close to the patient in terms of clinical care,” he told IP. “It also gives you a real opportunity to contribute to the direction of patient treatment. Our pharmacists who work in hospitals ensure not only that patients are getting safe treatment, but also optimal treatment. They give advice at the point where decisions are being made and play an increasingly pivotal role in ensuring that the right medicine gets to the right patient at the right time.”
The 2026 conference was the last in Mr Sykes’s tenure as President, and he reflected on his term at the helm of the Association. “It’s been incredibly rewarding, and incredibly challenging,” he said. “I’ve been incredibly fortunate, because we have gone through a period where we didn’t have a lot of changes [in the profession], and then when I started, the big changes started happening. We have been able to advance career development, we have more pharmacist grades recognised by our employer, people have been ‘grandparented’ into new roles, and more.
“It has been a real professional highlight to me, and I have a great sense of achievement in being able to see the benefits that have flowed from unlocking a lot of these developments.”
On his successor, Mr Declan O’Sullivan, Mr Sykes commented: “I wish Declan well; as an organisation, we still have a lot of work to do — in fact the work never stops, but the Association couldn’t be in a better or safer pair of hands.”
Touching on industry’s role in facilitating the conference, Mr Sykes said: “We are very grateful for the support that we have from our industry sponsors. We have a record number of exhibitors in our exhibition hall, and a really good turnout of people. Having that interaction between industry and pharmacists — we are all part of one team. We can do nothing without the pharmaceuticals that we use to treat our patients, so having that information exchange is really important to ensure that our pharmacists are keeping up to date.”
