Spreading the word

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Spreading the word

Ali Wyldbore is passionate about improving the health of her community and doesn’t just wait for people to come to the pharmacy

Ali Wyldbore has her husband to thank for introducing her to the world of community pharmacy. A delivery driver for Whitworth Chemists, Philip encouraged Ali to apply for a job at the company’s Stockton branch when it came up because he thought it seemed like a nice place to work. Ali had previously worked for Marks and Spencer and found that while working at a pharmacy involves “the same customer service skills”, it is far more “caring and personal”.

As well as giving her the chance to take on a more caring role, pharmacy has provided Ali with more opportunities to train and develop her career. She quickly progressed through her medicines counter and dispensing assistant training before going on to qualify as a healthy living champion when the Thorntree branch of Whitworth Chemists (where she now works) joined the healthy living pharmacy (HLP) scheme three years ago.

Support and advice

Since gaining HLP status, Whitworth Chemists in Thorntree has built on its successful stop smoking service with the addition of a weight management scheme, healthy living advice, emergency hormonal contraception (EHC) and services for drug users. The branch, which is managed by pharmacist Ginny Henderson, also offers medicines use reviews (MURs) and the new medicine service (NMS), as well as providing vitamins to families under the Government’s Healthy Start initiative.

The pharmacy promotes its services clearly in the shop window, while a weighing scale in the front-of-shop area acts as a conversation starter for healthy living advice or a gateway onto the weight management service. “Being a healthy living pharmacy is all about supporting people to change their lifestyles. When people come in to weigh themselves, we approach them and ask if they would like to take away a leaflet or if they have been on a diet, which gets them chatting,” explains Ali, who has herself lost two and half stone since becoming a healthy living champion. “However, sometimes people have the opposite problem and want to put on weight, so we offer support and recommend products like Complan.”

Ali is just as eager to help customers quit smoking, ensuring that she supports them to choose the best sort of NRT to suit their needs and praising them whenever their carbon monoxide reading goes down. “It’s all about giving people that extra bit of support because giving up smoking is such a difficult thing to do and requires so much willpower,” she says. And when it comes to services where discretion is paramount, such as EHC, methadone provision and needle exchange, Ali stresses the fact that “we all make mistakes in life and we don’t judge or treat people using these services as any different”.

As a healthy living champion, Ali is eager to help customers lose weight and quit smoking

Healthy living messages

Services are just one way in which the pharmacy is supporting people to change their health behaviour and improve their wellbeing. As an HLP, the branch runs health awareness campaigns on a different topic each month, while the team even ventures out into the local community to spread healthy living messages. 

“This month we are raising awareness of breast cancer, while last month we focused on looking after your teeth. We have fun putting the displays together, using resources from charities and libraries as well as Ginny’s drawing skills,” says Ali. “We have also held tombolas and raffles in the pharmacy, which are always very popular, and raised money for Cancer Research and the British Heart Foundation, usuall around Christmas or Easter time.”

Thanks to strong working relationships with staff from the healthcare centre located above the pharmacy, members of the team have arranged to visit outreach centres, where they provide health checks to people who are elderly or have conditions like dementia.

“I take their blood pressure while Ginny provides flu vaccinations and we weigh them too,” explains Ali. “The centre provides us with lunch and sometimes we have bingo and a raffle. It is a social occasion for them and makes us feel like part of the community.” As part of her healthy living champion role, Ali has also visited local schools to speak to children and young people about the risks of smoking, showing them what is inside a cigarette and giving them the opportunity to ask questions in confidence.

In addition, Ali says that becoming an HLP has changed the way the team deals with customer requests: “Now when we serve customers, we ask them more questions to try to get to the bottom of their problems instead of just going through the motions, and we also have to record any advice we give onto a database.”

We do a bit of everything here; it’s what pharmacy is all about

A bit of everything

The pharmacy’s strong position in the community means that Ali and her colleagues can always offer help, whether it’s discussing a sensitive health issue, offering healthy living advice or signposting to another service provider. For example, Ali recently made an appointment at an optician’s for a customer who was having trouble reading her medicines bottles due to poor eyesight, and she has often had to ring up her daughter, who is a dental nurse, to book customers with toothache in for an emergency dental appointment.

“We are a very close-knit community and know most of our customers by name. People feel like they can ask us anything,” she says. “We do a bit of everything here; it’s what pharmacy is all about.”

While Ali most enjoys helping people face-to-face, she also values the chance to help customers with their medicines through her dispensing role. Much of her work in the dispensary involves carefully making up medipacks for patients taking multiple medicines or who struggle to manage their medication, which Philip then delivers to patients’ homes. And, to ensure that her job never gets dull, she alternates between the dispensary and the counter with her colleague Joanne McKinstry, who is also fully trained as a dispensing assistant and a healthy living champion.

“It’s a great system,” says Ali. “I love what I do – I wouldn’t change it for anything.”

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