Made for retail

At the beginning of 2023, Marcella Deighan had never worked in anything healthcare related, let alone a pharmacy. She had been working in fashion retail for 12 years but was craving something new. “I decided I wanted to change direction and do something to help other people,” she explains. “I started looking for roles in healthcare and charity and thought this post was ideal.”

Marcella, now the retail success lead in Right Medicine Pharmacy stores across the central belt of Scotland and its borders – “27 pharmacies or thereabouts” – is making a valued contribution to these communities each day. 

Making a start

It wasn’t easy to begin with, and Marcella says she knew from the start it would take a while to fully grasp the ever-changing world of pharmacy.  “I don’t think I’ve ever come across a profession that uses as many acronyms!” she laughs. “I am still trying to learn and I take on as much as I can.” This sentiment of continuously learning in the pharmacy was particularly useful with Marcella’s new role of retail success lead – a position which did not exist before she joined. “One of the directors previously had a retail background himself, and he was looking to bring someone else in who was non-pharmacy based, to come in to look after the retail side,” Marcella explains. “I came in, as someone with more of a retail head, to look at the shop side of the pharmacies. It is overwhelming for staff to try to do the retail side of things and make sure they’ve got all the time they need for their patients as well as looking after everything else around them.”

Helping the team to help others

Marcella and the Right Medicine team have been creating the blueprint for her role over the last year or so, and now Marcella spends her days training staff, speaking to suppliers and representatives and organising retail spaces, amongst other things. “I train the counter staff within each of our branches, so they have the confidence and knowledge to go ahead and order the products and the stock they need themselves. I work alongside counter assistants and make sure each pharmacy’s retail offering is tailored to suit them and their demographic,” Marcella notes. It is especially important to Marcella that new recruits to the pharmacy are seen by her within their first few days, to receive their training on the retail processes. “A lot of my motivation comes from seeing new counter staff settle into their role, knowing that my training and support has helped them along the way a little,” she says. Marcella ensures that pharmacy teams across the group follow the same protocol, training teams to work the till, manage stock, and merchandise the store floor, “but I step in wherever necessary”, she says.

Hearing positive feedback from the pharmacy team and patients alike about the pharmacy’s setup and offering keeps Marcella driven to work hard each day. “Patients will come up and say, ‘the staff in here are so nice and they’ve always been very helpful,’ and something like that makes your day.”

Flying up over and above

Completing the counter assistant course was very important to Marcella. “Although I don’t work on the counter, I want to have a better understanding of the ideal products of the shop floor and how to work closely with patients,” she says. “I’ve never shied away from helping a patient, it’s second nature to me. Often people come into the pharmacy and they can be a little upset. I immediately want to put them at ease, so I would do my best to direct them to support, whether it be the pharmacist or counter staff.”

On top of her responsibilities Marcella gets involved in outreach work. “This involves attending schools and colleges for career fairs, where myself along with our training pharmacist promote community pharmacy to young people,” she says. “I also help out at local schools on behalf of Right Medicine Pharmacy, doing mock interviews with students to help them gain confidence in the process.”

Her greatest fulfilment in her role, however, has come recently. “I get tremendous job satisfaction from completing the setup of a new pharmacy,” Marcella says. “RMP have opened several new pharmacies over the last 18 months including moving one pharmacy into a new, larger premises. With this, I have been instrumental in choosing the stock package and merchandising and seeing this through to completion is very satisfying.”