In our first guest ‘Spotlight on…’ pharmacist Jamie Thorne talks about the importance of having access to patients before, during and after the pandemic and the initiatives they have taken to help their community to be healthier.

1. What is your background, and what made you choose a career as a pharmacist?

My father was an estate agent and a chartered surveyor, and both my brothers joined the family business, but I knew it wasn’t for me. I have always been interested in the sciences. I considered being a doctor, but felt pharmacy was a better fit for me.

2. Where have you made the most significant impact in your career so far?

I have worked really hard with my team to improve the health and wellbeing of our community. We have helped to educate and change behaviours and have had particular success with smoking cessation and weight management.

Through our weight management clinic, we’ve helped people lose a lot of weight over the last year – in some cases as much as four or five stones.

Providing the right support and education has been incredibly inspiring. It is amazing that simply helping people to understand basics such as the contribution carbohydrates and sugars make to weight gain, can have such an impact.

People are so amazed at what they can achieve once they learn what has been causing the weight gain and it is a privilege to be a part of that.

It is very rewarding to go beyond traditional pharmacy roles to knowing that we are contributing to improving survival rates and reducing the burden on the NHS.

3. The last 12 months has meant the pharma industry and pharmacists have had to adapt to how they interact – what impact do you think these changes will have moving forward?

When we first started to see the cases of COVID-19 spreading across Italy in February 2020, as a team we asked ourselves what we could do to help protect our community. At that point the best we could do was to help our patients become healthier and improve their immune systems.

Our smoking cessation and weight management programmes were a good foundation and in line with World Health Organisation / Government guidance, we provided advice on nutritional supplements (such as taking vitamin D) and lifestyle advice.

We have an App where patients can order prescriptions and have them delivered. It was created before the pandemic, but obviously really took off after lockdown.

Some of the other pharmacies at first closed their doors, but that wasn’t an option for us as we are committed to being able serve the community face-to-face. From the outset we made the decision to stay open and determined the safest way for our team and patients to do that.

We requested that every single member of staff wore FFP2 masks. We also researched the best hand sanitizer with a microbiologist at the hospital and put in strict cleaning protocols for staff, surfaces, and products in the pharmacy. We were working long shifts to stay open and our drivers worked overtime to ensure that people stayed home. It was a decision that our community appreciated and the precautions we took seemed to have worked. We have not had any COVID-19 infections stemming from our pharmacy.

Going forward, we will continue to keep our patients safe and advise them on their wellbeing.

4. Have there been any positive changes in the way you interact with patients since the pandemic outbreak?

Whilst online consultations have been successful in some instances, we like to see patients face to face. When you have virtual discussions, you are relying on the patient to communicate their condition and sometimes they can understate their discomfort because they have adjusted to the discomfort, or they don’t want to complain.

When a patient walks into the pharmacy we have an opportunity to observe their body language and how they are holding themselves which gives us a much better assessment of how they are coping.

Our app will be useful for patients, but we will always strive, whatever happens, to remain open for ‘business as usual’ and ensure that patients can continue to come to the pharmacy.

5. What are the key lessons you have learned to keep your business buoyant in recent times?

Above all – be accessible to patients.

Often you hear of complaints that people can’t get through to surgeries and are queuing for hours to speak to someone. We keep good lines of communication by employing someone dedicated to answering phone enquiries. Patients can also message us through the App and ask us questions.

Our delivery drivers are a really good source of information about our patients. Some of the patients in our community don’t have anyone that visits them so if they don’t come into the pharmacy their only point of contact is the delivery driver. Sometimes our drivers will let us know if they think a patient is struggling or could be having some mental health issues and we will get in touch with the GP and flag it so they can take action.

It is this good communication and accessibility that is vital for pharmacies and their communities.