Karen Janes impressed the judges with her enthusiasm and drive for providing professional services

Karen Janes, Highly Commended in the Kellogg’s All-Bran-sponsored Healthy Living Advisor category, believes in saying yes to everything. That is why, despite spending two days a week in the dispensary at LloydsPharmacy in Wimbourne, Dorset, and being involved in much of the shop floor work, such as checking and ordering stock, she has managed to complete an astonishing 275 Pruhealth Vitality Checks – a kind of “know your numbers” health MOT – in the last year.

Karen’s reasoning behind her huge drive on services – she also provides NHS Stop Smoking advice and diabetes, blood pressure and cholesterol checks – is simple: “With all the cuts to community pharmacy funding coming in, it’s a great way of boosting the pharmacy’s income.” She’s not wrong, but was astonished when the scale of her efforts was pointed out to her by line manager Laura Tonks: Karen had generated over £5,000 through her Vitality Checks alone.

In a big company, it’s tempting to think that efforts made on the frontline are overlooked, but that isn’t the case for Karen. LloydsPharmacy area manager Maz Stapleton was fully aware of Karen’s hard work and so put Karen’s name forward for this Award. Again, Karen was incredulous, saying: “It’s lovely to be recognised, but as far as I’m concerned, I’m just doing my job.”

The dispensing assistant is soon to embark on her pharmacy technician training and has ambitions to take her work to a wider audience. “I’d love to get out so I can extend the health checks to more people in the community via an outreach programme, but at the moment we don’t have the resources,” she says. “One day I’ll find the time to put this into practice, but for now, the idea will have to wait.” With such drive and enthusiasm, there is little doubt that Karen’s plans will come to fruition and she will be able to improve the health of even more people.