The calm interior of Pharmacare Pharmacy is a cool respite from the hot afternoon sun when C+D pays the pharmacy a visit in July.
Ever alert, its manager Sukhy Somal pops up from behind the counter at the sound of the door and attends to a customer asking for a first aid kit.
On a shelf behind her stand two C+D awards: one for Manager of the Year, which she won in 2020, the other snagged as part of a team effort in 2021 for the Pharmacy Team of the Year category.
Sukhy’s pride in these awards is immediately apparent. And she’s not shy about admitting that she wants to scoop up a third.
“There's just a nice little space there for another one,” she says, patting the shelf.
Team an “extension of family”
It is clear to see how busy this popular pharmacy is as soon as you slip past the shelf holding the awards. Behind it is the dispensary, a hubbub of activity: phones ring and the dozen team members on view seem intent on their tasks.
Sukhy points to a few of her colleagues and introduces them quietly, so as not to disturb them.
Pharmacare Solutions has brought in a few new recruits this year, bringing their headcount up to a very healthy 35 members of staff ranging in age from teenagers to septuagenarians. Sukhy regards each of them as “an extension of family” and jokes that she spends more time with her colleagues than with her husband.
Sure enough, the team plan to meet for a meal that evening, before indulging in some karaoke. What’s Sukhy’s favourite karaoke song, you may ask? “Anything Michael Jackson, because then you can just scream it,” she laughs.
Staying connected
In their application to the 2021 C+D awards, the Pharmacare team detailed how they came up with a service plan to support patients and each other at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
They dropped off food to community members who were self-isolating, delivered housebound patients their medication for free, and called customers and care homes to personally check in on them.
While the team has stopped offering some of these add-ons in recent months, as the pandemic’s effects wane and vulnerable patients feel safe walking into their local pharmacy again, the Pharmacare team have continued to meet for daily “huddles” at 10am every morning to go over the plan for the day.
“When you've got a team our size, you just want to say stuff once and everybody knows what everybody else is doing,” Sukhy explains.
Trainee dispensing technician Pardeep Singh- who’s worked at Pharmacare for three years – says this element of teamwork and steady communication has been key to the pharmacy’s success.
“That's how you're going to win these things,” he says, referring to the C+D awards.
For accuracy checking technician Adam Hayes, the daily huddles – which allow staff to bring up any issues on their minds – make the team “feel like [they are] involved in everything” and have distinguished Pharmacare Solutions from his previous workplaces.
“Everyone knows what they're doing from the from the start of the day and you feel more motivated to get those jobs done,” he explains.
A forgotten workforce
Although the Pharmacare team clearly already love what they do, Sukhy is quick to point out the importance of recognition.
Her colleagues “get a bit sick of me going on about” all the accolades the pharmacy has won, Sukhy laughs. But she thinks the recognition drummed up from events such as the C+D Awards is “good for pharmacy in general”. Despite the sector’s valiant efforts during the pandemic, the role of community pharmacy is often “forgotten about”, she points out.
“I think it's good that we shout about how amazing you all are,” she says, addressing her team.
“I always say to the team: we're award-winning, what would an award-winning pharmacy do? What standard would we work to?”
Jokes aside, Sukhy notes that winning C+D Awards two years in a row has “obviously boosted team morale”.
“But it's also helped me to recruit a higher calibre of people,” she notes. Applicants have often decided to apply for a role at Pharmacare Solutions after reading about the awards on the pharmacy’s website, she says.
Pharmacare has also seen commercial success – with a steady growth in the number of items it dispenses, as well as the contracts it has brought in.
“A lot of large contracts come to us”, Sukhy says, including some previously held by Boots for medication provision in 12 care homes.
“The business has […] been growing at rates of 15-20%, which in pharmacy world is not heard of,” she says, “especially with COVID-19”.
Sukhy remembers when her and her husband, Ranj “put every penny we had into setting up” Pharmacare in 2014.
“It was just two of us first, just sat there looking at each other, going, ‘The phone might ring,’" she recalls. “Now the phone doesn't stop ringing.”
Third time’s a charm
When it comes to entering the C+D awards, Sukhy recommends that those hoping to bag a trophy of their own “apply for one category at a time and really go for it”.
This year, she’ll be entering Pharmacare Solutions into the Independent Pharmacy of the Year category, in the hopes of snagging the pharmacy its third C+D Award in a row.
From what she’s seen throughout a pharmacy career spanning 22 years, “independents often get a really hard time” and are sometimes seen “as being bit substandard to the corporates and the big giants, Lloydspharmacy and Boots”.
But Sukhy has worked for the multiples in area manager roles, she points out. “And I know our standards are spot on, even equal if not above what they do.”
In entering the awards this year, she aims to “put a bit of pride back into independent pharmacy”.
Sukhy thinks independent pharmacies like Pharmacare are “doing an amazing job”.
“Take notice of us,” she warns. “Because we are as good as, if not better, than the multiples.”
Could you or one of your colleagues be crowned as a C+D Award winner? Check out all the categories for the 2022 awards and enter today.
