Inside Tomorrow's Pharmacist (2001)

Home > Students > Tomorrow's Pharmacist >
In the community

In the community by Helen Jones

I completed the first six months of my preregistration training at a small independent pharmacy in North Yorkshire. Working in a pharmacy was not a completely new experience since I had previously been employed in Saturday jobs and summer placements, all of which provided me with a great deal of basic experience in community pharmacy. As a consequence, I was able to concentrate on developing my skills to a higher level.

A traditional pharmacy

The pharmacy was a well established business of 21 years, with a sound customer base. The pharmacist had developed excellent relationships with many of the families in the town and surrounding villages, and this community pharmacy portrayed an almost ideal picture of what people imagine a traditional "chemist" to be like.

On an average day there would be around seven members of staff including the pharmacist and myself. This was a small, yet close and effective team, which meant I received a lot of one-to-one tutoring and personal attention to help my professional development.

The pharmacy was very busy for its size, dispensing approximately 6,000 prescriptions each month. It worked closely with the two surgeries in the town, having good relationships with the general practitioners, nurses and other clerical staff there, leading to good patient care. A member of the pharmacy staff visited each surgery twice a day. This allowed for the collection of repeat prescriptions and the delivery of orders previously placed by the surgery for items such as Controlled Drugs and dressings.

Services

The pharmacy ran a repeat prescription scheme, in which the patient brought the repeat prescription slip into the pharmacy, the pharmacy took this to the surgery, collected the prescription for the patient and the patient had to call back for their medication when it was ready. The elderly patients found this service extremely helpful.

Another service the pharmacy provided was the supply of oxygen cylinders. There were several patients on oxygen therapy and the cylinders had to be delivered on a regular basis.

The pharmacy also had several methadone patients, the majority of whom were supervised, but the pharmacist had a set of ground rules that were explained to the patients initially. The first job of the day was to dispense the methadone prescriptions so they were ready for collection when the patients arrived in the pharmacy. There was also a needle exchange scheme available.

The medicines for the nursing homes had to be dispensed and delivered every fortnight; this was a huge increase in the workload over that period of time. Several elderly customers had their prescriptions dispensed into monitored dosage systems — into either Dosette boxes or the Manrex system.

Advice

There were many requests throughout the day for health advice and over-the-counter products. This provided an excellent opportunity for me to practice my counselling skills, learn how to interact with patients and observe others. I learnt to appreciate the knowledge and expertise you can gain from trained health care and dispensing technicians.

The pharmacy counter was quite small but there was an area set aside for advice or counselling. Although small, the area was partitioned off from the rest of the counter allowing the patient to receive advice with some degree of privacy. This advice area allowed patients to discuss often embarrassing problems with the staff and encouraged others to seek advice for problems that they might normally be apprehensive about discussing.

Once a prescription had been dispensed and checked the medication was put in a small basket labelled and placed on the shelf. When a patient returned to collect their medication, they were taken to the advice area and could be shown, in privacy, what they had been prescribed before it was packed away into a bag. This allowed the staff to explain about any new medication the patient may have been prescribed or to check that they were happy with any existing medication.

Study

As it was a small independent pharmacy there were no organised study days, so I had to organise my time to develop my personal study skills. I was given time to study during the day, but because it was such a busy pharmacy, I also had to take time to study in the evenings. The downside of not attending study days was that I didn't get the opportunity to interact with fellow students, learning and discussing experiences, as you would at university. I found that keeping in touch with friends and talking about their placements was useful.

However, during my placement I completed an NPA preregistration self study course. This consisted of three sections — responding to symptoms, law and ethics and the Drug Tariff. This will be very useful when I have to prepare for the preregistration examination.

In conclusion, I thoroughly enjoyed this placement and learnt a great deal from the experience.