Alice Sparks has become a successful all rounder in a short space of time, with the judges praising her knowledge, caring nature and go-getting approach

Alice Sparks joined Bampton Pharmacy in Bampton, Devon, in January 2016, in a move that brought together her experience in retail and as a receptionist at the local GP practice. Her pharmacist, Anna Ansell, nominated her for this year’s Recognition of Excellence Awards, and the judges agreed with her assessment of Alice’s skills and devotion to her job, crowning her the winner of the Rising Star category, which was sponsored by Glenmark Pharmaceuticals.

There are lots of reasons why Anna nominated Alice for the award: completing her medicines counter assistant and dispensing assistant training courses just seven months after starting at the pharmacy; her enthusiasm for learning, no matter how potentially uncomfortable the topic, which has seen her become a specialist in the incontinence ranges that are stocked on the shop floor, even going to a patient’s home to assess her needs and leave her samples of products she thought might be helpful; her fundraising work for the charity Hospiscare, which saw her run 10 kilometers in her pyjamas… the list goes on.

Alice is one of four health champions at Bampton, which gained healthy living pharmacy (HLP) status last summer. She maintains the area of the shop floor that is dedicated to HLP, encouraging positive step changes in patients. Weight management is something of an area of expertise for Alice, who talks freely about how she slimmed down from the size 22 she got to after the birth of her first child, but went too far the other way in her weight loss mission after her second child was born.

She says: “People think that if you lose weight, you’ll be happy, but of course it doesn’t work like that. I ended up quite underweight at one point, and it really wasn’t good. Now I have found a happy medium that I have maintained for four to five years, and I know that if I exercise and eat well, I feel well. Lots of people know about my weight loss journey, so they come and talk to me about it – it takes courage to do that, so I always encourage it and talk openly about how it was for me.”

Alice documented her experience on Instagram, gaining many fans in the process: at the time of writing, she had over 53,800 followers. She uses her account to highlight the importance of healthy lifestyles and also used the social media platform to enthuse about a Care Navigation training day she attended recently. The hashtag she created was regarded as an excellent resource by the doctor who led the event, and has now been adopted within Bampton Pharmacy for signposting.

Alice believes in working at both micro and macro levels. An example of the former is a patient, who Alice bumped into while out delivering prescriptions. Even though the woman was relatively new to the area and had only been in the pharmacy a couple of times, Alice noticed that her speech appeared to be different. She raised her concerns with the pharmacist and local surgery, and got the woman an emergency appointment, at which point she was diagnosed as having had a stroke. Without Alice’s intuition and quick actions, the patient would not have got the time-sensitive treatment required.

At a macro level, the pharmacy is firmly embedded in the local community. Alice is a familiar sight in the village, popping into the surgery to collect prescriptions, delivering medication and shopping, all the while promoting the healthy living message by doing it all on foot. She also helps at a dementia support group that runs in a nearby community centre to support patients with the condition as well as those who look after them.

While some in her position would perhaps be looking for the next step up, this isn’t the case for Alice. She says that while a technician course would be interesting to do, her pharmacy already has a pharmacy technician and doesn’t really need another. Besides, she adds: “Just doing the job day in and day out is enough for me. I always go home having learned something new – perhaps a medicine I haven’t come across before, or a new product that might have come in.”

The Awards judges were bowled over by Alice’s holistic approach to her work and her life, with APTUK president Tess Fenn saying: “Alice has shone through… not only has she excelled in her own development, but she has shown her caring nature, giving to pharmacy and patients through her charity work for the benefi t of the whole community.” Fellow judge and pharmacist Sarah Coffin declared that to her, Alice is “a real community star”.