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It is evident that progress is key to pharmacy, and that pharmacy teams and customers alike stand to benefit from looking at ways to improve efficiency, training and customer satisfaction. Daniel Duarte, this year’s winner of the Innovation category, has thought of all of this and has come up with ways to deliver it for his colleagues and patients at Aberdeen Walk Pharmacy in Scarborough.
Continuously improving
Having worked in pharmacy for over 20 years, Daniel has seen much change, but also ensured he has been an integral part of that change.
“We want the pharmacy to be a place where the patients feel comfortable and have almost instant treatment”, said Daniel, which is one of the reasons behind the development of an online ‘clinic’ he is creating along with his pharmacist. “The idea is for us to be the best pharmacy in terms of advice for patients. Even if they are not our patients, I want them to come to us for advice.”
Daniel has identified three areas where the pharmacy could improve: making sure the team’s training is as up-to-date and relevant as possible; providing an easy, accessible route to care for patients; and giving customers a chance to educate themselves on health issues. Having developed his IT skills over the years, Daniel and his team decided to begin working on an online clinic to improve these points, with Daniel working on the IT behind the online portal, all through work done in his own time outside of the pharmacy’s hours. “I’ve just done the intranet for an online communication with staff and customers for learning resources and training. There will be training on there for the team to watch, we are going to do that maybe twice a month. At least once a month, there will be an in-depth training, about 10-15 minutes on biology and anatomy, including a bit of pharmacology and other services we can provide as well as counter training and product advising,” he added. RoE judge and previous Spotlight Award winner, Arunoday Lekkala, commented: “Training all member of staff in all areas (of their interest) is brilliant.”
When and where
Thinking of how people would want to access this educational resource is a crucial aspect to ensuring its success, which Daniel has not forgotten. Thus the material is planned to be made available in digital and physical format. “Since Covid we have seen a bit of a transformation, haven’t we? Everyone has gone online, even elderly people,” he said. “If someone is housebound, we want them to still be able to access the resources, so we need to create them for both in person and online. Otherwise, we don’t reach patients. If patients can’t come in to us, we want to be able to communicate with them remotely.”
“He looked at how the needs of patients changed and looked to change with them,” commented Tim Rendell, RoE judge and head of pharmacy at Day Lewis. Well done Daniel!