The Australian health and aged care systems have inherent complexity. Numerous dimensions illustrate the complexity, including care by multiple providers to a population with different needs and within an environment with various funding levers. 

While community-based pharmacists have insight into the complexity of their work environment and researchers examine this, approaches are required to ensure policymakers and funders make sense of the environment in which their decisions impact. 

In completing a PhD by prior publication, Grembowski's conceptual model of the role of complexity in the care of patients with multiple chronic conditions was used to provide a framework to examine six previously published studies. The core tenets of the model are the patient's and caregiver's needs, complexity, and available services. This paper uses this conceptual model to explore the environment concerning the roles of pharmacists, caregivers and medications in supporting people with palliative needs in the primary care setting. Significantly, it demonstrated how these publications collectively contribute to new insights into the complex environment where community-based pharmacists and caregivers collaborate in delivering care to support the dying to remain in their home environment. Indeed, these new insights are critical to understanding how community-based pharmacists operate within the complex environment of Australian health and aged care. In doing so, we demonstrate how the model assisted in identifying research gaps, inherent tensions in delivering care, emerging themes, and new perspectives on the care environment using hindsight. 

So, while this paper demonstrates the use of Grembowski’s conceptual model in understanding the role of pharmacists, caregivers and medications for people with palliative needs, this model has various additional applications. Specifically, organisations that develop policy, fund research, and translate research findings into pharmacy practice could benefit from this approach: delivering evidence-based health and aged care in the community.