The St Pauls area of Bristol is now a foodie haven and the heartland of the city’s music scene. But this inner suburb has nevertheless developed a rough reputation over the years in the wake of the infamous 1980 St Pauls riot, when police clashed with locals following a raid on the area’s Black and White Café.

Now, over 30 years later, the area is still mired in health inequalities, housing some of the most deprived people in the city. Stokes Croft Pharmacy, which owner and pharmacist 'Phil the Pill' Hunt describes as being “on the fringe” of St Pauls. Stokes Croft Pharmacy counts drug addicts and asylum seekers as part of its diverse cohort of patients – many of whom still flock there even after they’ve left the area because of the stellar, non-judgemental service they receive.

Read more: The pharmacy revolutionising hub-and-spoke dispensing

At the heart of Phil’s business lies a simple philosophy; one that he has followed since reading it in a book when he was child. That is, do to others as you would be done by. And his small team have taken this attitude to heart, serving each and every one of their patients with compassion, good humour and open-mindedness, no matter how challenging the circumstances.

These qualities caught the judges’ eyes for the C+D Awards 2023, and the pharmacy walked away with the coveted Pharmacy Team of the Year trophy at a glittering prizegiving ceremony in September. Now, more than half a year since then, Phil reveals to C+D that he was inspired to enter after success at an awards ceremony presided over by Avon LPC in 2022.

“It encouraged me to pad out our entry to make it suitable for entry into the much more prestigious C+D Awards,” he says via email as C+D sets up some time to discuss his achievements, signing off as “Pharmacy Team of the Year 2023, and proud of it!”

 

A compassionate approach

 

Something that makes Stokes Croft Pharmacy truly special is its willingness, and even enthusiasm, to help those much of the rest of society shuns. For example, Phil says there are over 100 patients who visit the pharmacy daily for supervised consumption.

He explains: “Stokes Croft Pharmacy has been a very successful business by breaking away from the normal approach and operating in an area where most would prefer not to be.

Read more: Signature style: The private e-script tool creating a buzz in community pharmacy

“The shop is a very small standard single-fronted retail unit. I always say that it's not pretty but entirely functional. It was designed internally to cope with the expected large number of methadone/buprenorphine addicts collecting daily.”

The well-though-out layout of the pharmacy isn’t the only thing that keeps these patients coming back to the pharmacy again and again, though. “I think the real strength of my pharmacy team is that we actually treat people nicely,” Phil tells C+D over the phone.

“The reason that we have so many [addicts coming to the pharmacy] and that they constantly try and stay with us even if they’ve moved further away is that – instead of them going into a pharmacy and being treated as a third-class citizen, being shoved in a corner and told to wait and watched over because they think they’re going to steal things – we treat them as people.”

 

Going the extra mile

 

It's a simple approach, but Phil says his patients truly appreciate it. “We’ve got well over 100 a day coming and these people can be quite difficult,” he explains. “So, to think they behave in our pharmacy is a reflection of the fact that they know why they’re there and what they’re doing and that nobody’s going to mess them around.”

Read more: 'The problem within the profession is'... shining a light on pharmacy technicians

Far from it, Phil and the team go above and beyond to help their patients. Phil recounts a recent encounter with a regular patient using the supervised consumption service, who needed a reference for a passport application. “And I said, ‘Yeah, don’t worry, send it through to me,’” he says.

“We’re there as professionals within the community and accepted as such because if people want to try and contact their GP to do something like this these days, they either never get a reply or get told no or get told how much it’s going to cost them.”

The team also have an excellent working relationship with the various agencies they work with that refer their patients for supervised consumption. These organisations truly appreciate the proactive approach demonstrated every day by the Stokes Croft Pharmacy team, who make sure they’re always on hand to pick up the phone to answer any of their questions. “They all phone us all the time to check on their various clients and they’re always pleased to hear that we can give them an answer,” says Phil.

 

An international clientele

 

As well as the large number of addicts visiting the pharmacy, Stokes Croft Pharmacy is also a regular haunt for many of the city’s asylum seekers. Due to this, and the pharmacy’s location in historically multicultural part of Bristol, it’s regularly visited by patients for whom English is not their first language. But the team do not let this prevent them from offering a top-notch service.

“Communication can be difficult in some circumstances, not all of them speak English well,” Phil admits. “But we get on really well with them.” But he points out that many of these patients have a better grasp of the concept that they may be expected to pay fo their prescriptions than his British-born customers. “They all seem to think that the NHS should pay for everything and that medicines shouldn’t cost anything, which can be a bit of a trial,” he says.

Read more: Menopause? Meet the award-winning private pharmacy throwing menopausal women a lifeline

He advocates that they follow his lead when dealing with patients, especially in challenging situations. “I ask them to look at me,” he says. “If they don’t understand how I’m dealing with people, they’re not the right person [to work here].”

So what does he look for in his staff members? A proactive mindset is a must, which Phil believes sets his team apart. “For a start, when the phone rings, we answer it – which might sound ridiculous, but you try phoning an awful lot of pharmacies and you’ll get an awful lot of no replies,” he says. “The other thing is that pretty much as soon as somebody comes in, they’re greeted, they know where to go; we deal with them straightaway.

"We don’t keep people hanging around long. I feel that people coming it get a good experience.”

Read more: The GP pharmacist with a prescription for success

If his clientele at the pharmacy are loyal then so are his team members themselves. As Phil points out, the most senior non-pharmacist member of his team – pharmacy manager Kay – has been working at Stokes Croft Pharmacy for the best part of a decade. “She’s a workaholic, she actually works far too many hours. We keep telling her she’s got to take a holiday," jokes Phil. "She’s really quite remarkably good. But everybody has their position and they don’t argue with each other as to who should be doing something. They all know what they should be doing.”

So how did they feel when he took home the C+D Awards 2023 trophy last year? “Oh, they were made up. They were really chipper about it,” laughs Phil. And this was similar to his own, rather emphatic, reaction to hearing his pharmacy’s name being called out as the winner: “When they announced that we’d won I was a little bit pleased – I jumped up and down.”

Read more: The award-winning community pharmacist leading the charge for DSPs

The prized trophy “lives on a shelf in the shop so that everybody and anybody can see it,” says Phil. “We had it in the window for about a month.” He explains that shortly after picking up the award, he contacted the local media, resulting in an article in the Bristol Post and “significant” local attention.

Phil is a huge advocate for trying your luck and submitting an entry to the C+D Awards 2024.He says: “I would encourage anyone to put themselves forward. How can we show the world our very best if our very best hide away?”

 

The C+D Awards 2024 will take place at The Brewery in London on September 19. Could you or one of your colleagues be crowned as a C+D Award winner? Check out all the categories for the 2024 awards and enter today.