“No problem is too big” for Emma Pascall, according to her pharmacy manager Eden Money, who nominated her for the Healthy Living Advisor Award.

“Emma is an outstanding individual and always thrives to contribute her fullest. No patient will ever go without,” she adds.

Emma’s pharmacy journey began six years ago, when she was working in the hospitality sector. “At the time, my dad had cancer and I started regularly coming into the pharmacy I work in now to collect his medication,” she explains. “The staff were always really friendly and one day I saw that a position was available. I felt like I wanted to give something back to the team that had been so caring to me. I wanted to be part of a team like that.”

She confesses that she knew nothing about pharmacy, but she got the job and has worked her way up from sales advisor to pharmacy technician – with aspirations to do her accuracy checking technician course soon – as well as becoming the pharmacy’s healthy living champion.

Emma now runs various healthy living campaigns on conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes, and plays a key role in the pharmacy’s services, too.

She works hard to tailor her smoking cessation advice to give each individual the best chance of success. “I learnt a lot about how smoking works and what it means to be addicted and how differently it can look for each individual,” Emma explains. “For example, some addicts really miss the sensation of putting something in their mouth. That highlighted how important it is to recommended customers the right products to help them quit.”

Reliable relationships

Emma’s healthy living activities don’t stop at the pharmacy walls, however. “I have a really good relationship with the manager at the local leisure centre,” she says. “I go there and do blood pressure and diabetes checks for elderly people before they go into the gym. I then signpost them to the pharmacy and promote our services, saying they can come to us for extra advice and support.”

Building close relationships with many of these people and working with them has had mutual benefit. “It has made me think about what I am eating too,” Emma says. “I have one lady and we both chat, monitor and motivate ourselves together as I know the patients find it really nice to go through weight loss with someone.”

This personal approach stood out for the RoE judges, with Richard Stephenson, chief operating officer at Right Medicine Pharmacy, commenting: “Emma is not only providing some great services to the community, but is further engaging them by bringing her own health into the picture.”

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