Myra Battle may have a fighting name, but her ascent to the top of this year’s Recognition of Excellence Awards was less of a fight and more a unanimous decision by the judges

Accuracy checking technician Myra Battle from Boots UK in Sudbury built on her success of 2015 – when she won two categories and was shortlisted in a third – by scooping the Counter Intelligence and Innovation gongs and being Highly Commended in the Outstanding Contribution category this year. She was also named Spotlight Award winner, with independent pharmacy proprietor and judge Reena Barai commenting: “I wish she worked for me!”

Myra has worked with medicines for decades, having started with Boots as a trainee when she was just 16 years old. Over the years, she has completed dispensing assistant, pharmacy technician and accuracy checking technician qualifi cations, and more recently became a healthy living champion in order that her store – Boots’ Market Hill branch in Sudbury, Suffolk – could become a healthy living pharmacy. Along the way, Myra has spent time employed at a dispensing doctor’s practice, which has given her valuable insight into the world of general practice and primary care.

The health promotion activities that she dreams up and executes at her pharmacy are too numerous to list, but include campaigns to highlight the many services on offer, including chlamydia testing, smoking cessation clinics, emergency hormonal contraception provision, influenza vaccination, medicines use reviews and the new medicine service. Myra also spearheads campaigns that she feels are beneficial to the community, even though the pharmacy may only be able to provide advice and signposting, covering topics as wide ranging as alcohol awareness and debt management.

Myra’s work extends well outside the pharmacy, and currently includes a secondment with the Local Pharmaceutical Committee to train health champions who in turn can spread the healthy living pharmacy message. She also works with many organisations including Essex and Suffolk County Councils, local healthy living service Live Well Suffolk, school nurses and mental health charity Mind to make sure they understand what community pharmacy has to offer. Live Well Suffolk marketing and events executive James Rossington hails Myra as “motivating” and “proactive”, and says she is “a key part of the work we do across the county”.

Myra is now operating on a national basis, providing support to projects – including one run by the chief pharmacist’s office of Boots UK – that she says “will support others to grow and enjoy learning in many ways”. Clearly a queen of networking, Myra considers it vital that individual pharmacies combine forces “so all our strengths can be utilised”.

With so much going on, it would be easy to jump to the conclusion that Myra’s day job in her Boots branch plays second fiddle, but this is most definitely not the case.

Pharmacist Jacqueline Hewitt comments: “Myra has a fantastic approach with customers. She empowers them and is very empathetic.” Customer testimonials – so rare in an age when people are far more likely to complain than compliment – are abundant, and include remarks such as: “She really does provide an outstanding service and goes above and beyond her call of duty.”

Myra says she has seen many changes in her long career. Where she used to make up creams and count tablets into bottles, now she provides services she would never have dreamt of. She relishes the efficiency that technological advances have enabled, the round the clock cover that pharmacy can provide thanks to extended hours contracts, and the face to face contact with patients that keeps them healthy and happy.

Awards judge and independent pharmacy consultant Trevor Gore commended her for this, saying: “Myra has grown and changed alongside pharmacy and has clearly embraced services as the way forward.”

The judges were unstinting in their praise. Healthy living pharmacy authority and pharmacy consultant Deborah Evans said: “Myra is an amazing example of a dedicated healthcare professional… she has a huge amount of energy for programmes and finds innovative ways of engaging with the public to make them work.” Association of Pharmacy Technicians UK (APTUK) secretary Joanne Taylor added: “Myra’s consistent reflection within the pharmacy and beyond on how to reach out to patients and the local area is unrivalled.”

Richard Stephenson, retail head at Scottish chain Right Medicine Pharmacy, summed it up beautifully when he said: “Myra is everyone’s ideal employee. A life dedicated to pharmacy and improving people’s health, she is truly inspirational.”

Back to Celebrating success: meet the RoE finalists 2016.