Ever-increasing workloads, difficulties attracting full-time pharmacists and funding cuts are just some of the pressing issues community pharmacies throughout the UK are currently dealing with.
While pharmacists and pharmacy staff are no strangers to hard work, when COVID-19 hit the UK in 2020, community pharmacy was thrust into unprecedented territory.
But the Day Lewis pharmacy team in Burnham-On-Sea have been a force to be reckoned with. When C+D visits during a busy Monday afternoon in July, the team are calm and collected, handling each patient’s request like clockwork.
The team were crowned the winner of the COVID HERO – Outstanding Team award in November for their stellar efforts. Now, Alison Curtis - the branch’s accuracy checking technician – shares how she and her team have coped with ever-increasing workloads and the chance to participate in a huge national vaccination programme.
“There’s been a lot of ups and downs”
When the pandemic hit, pharmacy teams around the country were presented with ever-increasing workloads as other primary care providers became less easily accessible. As well as taking on patient queries – such as urinary tract infections and throat infections – typically saved for the GP, the team were also presented with more serious conditions as the pandemic progressed.
Read more: The pharmacy technician who supported seven Lloydspharmacy branches through COVID-19
The team saw “a lot more mental health related” queries, Alison says. “There have been a lot of people that [because of] being stuck inside, their mental health has not been great at all,” she adds.
This meant personally intervening in some cases, taking patients into consultation rooms and offering advice and a supportive ear when they were struggling.
“There have been a lot of ups and downs,” she admits. At certain points, the team were subject to “a lot of grief”, she explains. “It's just trying to keep the morale going. There's a lot of grumpy customers, but then there's a lot of lovely customers who are just lush.”
The team have close relationships with many of their regular patients. In one instance, Alison and a colleague gave up their lunch break to visit a patient at his home after he failed to show up at the pharmacy to collect his medicines. “He’s a weekly patient,” she says, “so I was a little worried about him”.
On arrival, they found him lying on the kitchen floor, so the pair went into the premises and phoned an ambulance. “We stayed with him until the ambulance arrived. He had sepsis and just wasn't a very well man at all,” Alison recalls. During his hospital stay, the team even kept in touch with his niece to check on his progress.
“I don’t really like needles”
Not content with just running a busy pharmacy during a global pandemic, when the call came in from NHS England and NHS Improvement inviting pharmacies to join the COVID-19 vaccination programme, the branch decided they would lead an offsite vaccination clinic at Burnham Association of Sports Clubs.
Running from Friday to Sunday every week, this ensured the pharmacy was able to remain open and wasn’t short staffed, Alison explains.
While the branch’s pharmacist acted as the pharmacy lead at the offsite vaccination clinic, the task became a collective Day Lewis effort, with pharmacists at the multiple’s Berrow and Weston-super-Mare branches also stepping in to act as leads. Volunteers and team members from other branches also helped with paperwork and booking people in.
Read more: The award-winning pharmacist revolutionising cancer care
“I don’t think I had one weekend off the whole time,” she admits. “It makes me sound like I had no life.”
Not only did the pharmacy team have to upskill rapidly, but as an accuracy checking technician, Alison herself had never delivered vaccinations before the onset of the pandemic.
“I don't really like needles,” she admits. “But I thought, I'm just going to go for it and do it.”
And that she did. “I just fell in love with it,” she says. “The most rewarding aspect was just helping people and I learned so much up there.”
Training the workforce
With debates around pharmacist shortages and workforce issues continuing to plague the sector, the Day Lewis team of seven – all local to the area – have found new methods to recruit staff.
One team member, Sue, began as a volunteer at the COVID-19 vaccination site. “She was so good with customers,” Alison says.
“When a job came up in here, I told her to go for it,” she adds. “Going from volunteer to then having a job is brilliant.”
With two apprentices, the team have also trained up dispensers who work on the floor.
It is important that all staff members have first-hand experience and work cohesively as a team, so that “everybody's doing every job”, Alison says.
What’s next for the team?
The team are always finding new ways to expand their offering, too. “We are such a busy pharmacy and we're seeing more and more prescriptions every day – quite a high rate at the moment,” she admits.
Blood pressure and hypertension checks have rocketed, too. “I’ve signposted quite a lot of people back to the GPs, because their blood pressure’s just been way too high,” she says.
Read more: Pharmacy hypertension service: Over 100k blood pressure checks in 6 months
Patients can also undergo full health checks, where cholesterol and BMI are measured. Introduced earlier this year, following “increased demand” in weight loss enquiries, it has already proven popular.
But following the success of the COVID-19 vaccination site, Alison can’t wait to “get back jabbing” and begin rolling out the annual flu programme, she admits.
While the team are well aware of the pressures they may face, with this autumn’s programme predicted to be the busiest yet, Alison isn’t downbeat – far from it.
“It means everything to us to be recognised, to be honest,” she says. “I just want to keep doing what we're doing really and help people.”
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