AWARD WINNERS
PHARMACY BUSINESS
DEVELOPMENT
CADHAM PHARMACY, GLENROTHES
MANY COMMUNITY PHARMACISTS ARE NOW GETTING INVOLVED IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THEIR BUSINESS ABOVE AND BEYOND THE TRADITIONAL ‘COMMUNITY PHARMACY MODEL’. WHEN BERNADETTE BROWN TOOK OVER CADHAM PHARMACY THREE YEARS AGO, SHE CERTAINLY HIT THE GROUND RUNNING!
Bernadette was immediately struck by the challenges that the pharmacy faced. For a start, it was clear that staff development was required at all levels to allow the IP pharmacist face to face consultation time. As a result, Bernadette invested heavily in employing new staff and in training and developing the existing staff.
Bernadette’s ‘vision’ for the pharmacy involved the provision of a clinic for minor illness and long-term conditions, and so she reduced the front shop stock and space in favour of healthcare consultation rooms, no longer selling anything other than self care.
In order to achieve her vision, and due to the fact that, over the three years, the pharmacy’s prescription volume experienced a massive increase, Bernadette invested in her first robot at a large capital cost of £100,000. Since then, she has added another robot to the pharmacy offering.
‘The increase in script volume meant an increase in staff levels to further improve this core business and deliver exceptional supply in both collection and delivery as well as acute scripts from the GP practice,’ Bridget told SP. ‘It also helped me to reinvest back into the pharmacy to build my dream clinical pharmacy practice.’
The greatest development at Cadham
Pharmacy, however, has been with regard to the consultation rooms.
When Bernadette first bought the pharmacy, there was one tiny consultation room and no separate area for addiction clients. She therefore built a separate high specification treatment room in 2014 and added a second room in 2015 due to the high uptake of minor ailments consultations in the community. The addiction clients now have their own separate area which has been a wonderful addition for their privacy and respect.
The long-term conditions are also treated in these rooms and, after taking part in this year’s Fife initiative on communication with GPs for prescription queries with the SBAR tool, Bernadette implemented this as a Standard Operating Procedure.
Bernadette has also received some funding for community pharmacy medication reviews and, during this year, also hopes to get funding for the Common Clinical Conditions Clinic.
As a result of the many changes that she has implemented in the pharmacy, more and more patients are now choosing to use Bernadette’s Common Clinical Conditions Clinics, at which she can now prescribe for more of the public with the new IP prescribing pads.
Bernadette Brown and her daughters from Cadham Pharmacy and Rebecca Cabrejas, Actavis UK
Services apart, from the outset, Bernadette recognised that building relationships and professional understanding with fellow healthcare professionals was key to achieving their support, and being able to share the care of the people who wanted the pharmacist to help with their acute or long-term care. Almost immediately, therefore, she turned her attention to building professional trust. Naturally this process has taken time and, on occasion, there have been barriers. Nonetheless, Bernadette considers the time spent on this area as an investment.
‘The fact that we work closely with referral pathways means that GP practice cooperation is crucial for this to work seamlessly for the public,’ she continues. ‘For that reason, I meet regularly with the GP team and we are now finalising the referral pathway with acute care.’
Staff training and development is another key area, which is both an investment and constantly ongoing.
‘Building the expertise in the team takes time,’ says Bernadette, ‘and it is still a work in progress. Our dispensing team has grown due to increased volumes of work and they have embraced the new technology we have been introducing such as EPOS tills, Electronic registers and Methameasure. The robots were a challenge, with some staff initially fearing for their jobs, before realising
SCOTTISH PHARMACIST - 41
the benefits that these would bring.
‘It is a joy to work with hard-working people who are motivated. Of course it has been challenging – after all, no one likes change – but we implemented these changes gradually and with a lot of support to ensure we kept the staff morale high.
‘I am so proud that, with our team having grown from eight to 18, it’s great to see that they now have team Facebook chats and are coming together as one big close family. A bit of a cliché I know, but true. I can honestly say that it’s a privilege to know and work with them.
‘I can teach skills, but I cannot always teach compassion and care. My team have been chosen primarily for their reasons to want to work in a community pharmacy. They are genuine, caring people who treat every customer as if they are a relative or friend.’
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