Ash Soni, LPN chair of the London and English Pharmacy Board, RPS, offered a few words of wisdom and action points for the pharmacy sector to consider during the Pharmacy Show’s closing speech.

To raise the profile of community pharmacy, he suggested that pharmacists could make a greater effort to engage with patient groups, such as Asthma UK and Diabetes UK, as these charities often talk about the roles of doctors and nurses, but rarely mention pharmacists. He also stressed the importance of appearing available to offer patients advice, rather than remaining hidden in the dispensary.

In order to cope with increased work burdens, Mr Soni stressed the need for pharmacists to rely more on their support teams and enable pharmacy technicians and health champions to take on more responsibility, insisting that “a true leader knows when to allow others to take the lead”.

When it came to turning pharmacies into health and wellbeing centres, he reminded delegates that “we don’t see well people, we see apparently well people” and urged pharmacists and pharmacy technicians to focus on integrating their services and providing continuity of care for patients.

He also stressed the importance of considering all of a patient’s needs together. “The single biggest intervention we can offer someone with diabetes is to help them to lose weight. My role is to sort out their medicines, but my health champion is there to sort out their weight problem. We need to think of the whole person,” he said.