Back for another year, Ask Your Pharmacist Week is putting local health priorities front and centre and embracing the potential of community pharmacy, says Helena Beer

Hardly a week has gone by in recent months without reports of the increasing pressure on GPs and A&E departments. Pharmacy bodies have stepped forward with proposals and plans to ease this pressure and put pharmacy at the forefront of primary care as a first port of call for many minor conditions. PSNC’s Five Point Forward Plan for pharmacy outlined the services it believes the NHS should commission to harness the potential of community pharmacy.

This plan was announced shortly after the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) and the National Association of Primary Care (NAPC) proposed the development of programmes that could increase collaboration between GPs and community pharmacists, including considering community pharmacy as an NHS access point for minor ailments. And most recently, Pharmacy Voice called on politicians to enable community pharmacies to do more to tackle major public health issues such as obesity, smoking and alcohol.

Claire Ward, chair of Pharmacy Voice, said in a statement: “Community pharmacy has a vital role to play in ensuring a sustainable NHS for the future. It is the most accessible healthcare location and able to reach some of the most vulnerable in society… However, there is great potential for community pharmacy to do more.”

Getting the message of ‘pharmacy first’ widely heard and understood is therefore increasingly important. And the National Pharmacy Association’s Ask Your Pharmacist (AYP) Week aims to do just that. Taking place from 9-16 November this year, AYP Week involves a local dialogue between pharmacies and MPs, local authorities and the public.

It serves as a platform to encourage customers to engage with their pharmacies and ask questions. Reena Barai, pharmacist at SG Barai Pharmacy in Sutton, says: “We talk to patients day in, day out but never really offer the opportunity for them to ask any questions they like about their health or the services we offer. That’s why the week is so important – to get that conversation started and raise awareness of all that pharmacy does.”

National initiatives are essential to high quality primary care, but pharmacies must also look closer to home to decide what services to offer to their local community and customers. This is why the NPA has taken a fresh approach to this year’s campaign and instead of promoting a specific nationwide theme as in previous years, AYP Week 2015 will encourage pharmacies to look at the needs of their customers at a local level.

Stephen Fishwick, NPA head of communications, says: “This year’s theme – Ask Your Pharmacist about Medicines and More – is deliberately broad, so that there can be maximum flexibility for LPCs, NHS agencies, individual pharmacies and students to all use it as befits the local need. Pharmacies are currently assessing what they want to press home in their local area and then there will be posters and materials for a large number of services available for them, depending on what they’ve chosen – diabetes, asthma, you name it, we’ve got it.”

This ensures that pharmacies can tailor the week to their local demographic and make a bigger difference to members of their community. There’s scope for all pharmacies to get involved – no matter how large or modest – and something very simple can have a big impact. For example, Reena has previously put adverts in the local newspaper and, last year, made use of the NPA’s AYP Week poster by turning it into an A5 flyer and attaching one to every prescription bag.

“It raised awareness of the services we provide and promoted the fact that it should be ‘pharmacy first’ for lots of seasonal health issues,” she says. There’s also potential for bigger projects during the week, as Reena’s experience shows. “Opposite the pharmacy there is a pub and a garage, so when it came to men’s health [a previous focus of AYP week], I saw those as a great opportunity.”

“In the pub, we handed out leaflets encouraging men to come in for a heath check – if you can pop to the local pub for a quick pint, you can pop to the local pharmacy for a quick check up. And at the garage it was a similar idea, so if you take your car in for an MOT you can go and have a health MOT for yourself while you wait. We checked weight, alcohol consumption, blood pressure and BMI,” she explains.

“We got between 10 and 20 men take us up on the offer, which isn’t a high number, but we’re not a high volume pharmacy and that’s a lot more than we would have had in otherwise. It’s all about making use of your local network.”

Stephen’s top tip for pharmacies taking part in AYP Week is to make use of the free resources available from the NPA. And Reena’s advice is to have a dedicated member of staff – such as the health champion – as the spokesperson for the week.

“AYP Week is just one part of ongoing public awareness activities organised by the NPA and others aiming to position community pharmacies as the first port of call for medicines and medicines advice and as a public health provider,” explains Stephen. “Ultimately, it’s about achieving a change in consumer behaviour, so that people make greater appropriate use of community pharmacy.”

 

Pharmacies can tailor the week to their local demographic and make a bigger difference to members of their community