The Pharmaceutical Journal Vol 266 No 7150 p749-752
June 2, 2001

  The Profession
  PSNC
  In-store pharmacies
  Packaging
  Medicines supply
  Depression
  Locum pharmacy
  The army
  Methadone dispensing

In-store pharmacies

How to work to your advantage

From Mr C. Hackett, MRPharmS

I have been in continuous employment since my graduation in 1989, the past three years as a district manager with a large retail pharmacy chain. I have worked in over 90 of the company’s stores and I have been highly committed and I believe successful. I have enjoyed working for the company immensely.

However, I have decided that to develop my career I need to gain wider experience and work for someone else. I have decided to work in a different branch of community pharmacy and become a pharmacy manager in an in-store pharmacy.

The past few years have seen the company I work for expand rapidly by purchasing independents and smaller chains. This has resulted in a serious reduction in the choice of jobs for committed pharmacy managers such as myself, when a career with one company has run its course.

Three of the largest supermarkets in Britain now have expanding pharmacy chains. These companies are well-established retailers and I look forward to being able to have the management training they will provide. I am also looking forward to working as part of a senior team in managing a high turnover retail operation, as well as driving forward the pharmacy business in the successful way I have done over the past 12 years.

As regards the issues relating to in-store pharmacies, I see them as vital to our profession’s future. Shopping habits are changing and will continue to change. More people are getting more of their shopping from large supermarkets. The NHS plan recommends that pharmacy services should be available where people want them to be and their presence in some supermarkets shows we are reacting to patient needs and we are moving with the times and into the future.

In response to the correspondent objecting to the placement of the pharmacy by lager stacks, I would argue that unless you are operating a pharmacy from an open space then you always have neighbours. Over the years I have had such diverse neighbours as an off-licence, a baker, a newsagent, a tattooist and a car spares place. A butcher next door in a high street is just like a meat department in a store. The only difference is the building materials that separate them.

What actually matters is the pharmacist’s commitment to the profession and his dedication to provide an excellent customer service wherever he is working. In my career I have worked in a wide range of stores: some falling down, some with brand new refits, some busy and some quiet. But I have always found, through enthusiasm to provide the best pharmacy service I can, that I have never had a problem recruiting and retaining staff to work for me, and I have never had a problem covering a pharmacist rota for up to 12 shops.

What I urge locum pharmacists to do — particularly those newly qualified — is to commit themselves to managing pharmacies and commit themselves to one company for at least five years. It is a myth that locums get paid more than managers. In the long term they do not, with all the benefits managers enjoy through salary rises, bonuses, holiday pay, training courses, company pension schemes and relocation expenses.

If more young pharmacists committed themselves to managing, then those issues relating to in-store pharmacies would no longer exist and all types of community pharmacy would be better equipped to move into an exciting future.

Colin Hackett
Bristol

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