As part of the ‘Ask Your Pharmacist Week’, which encourages people to make better use of their local pharmacist – not just for prescriptions, but for advice, support, and everyday health concerns, Faruque Gani, a community pharmacist in London and tells us more about how he helps local patients stay in control of their health.
‘I’ve been working as a community pharmacist for over 30 years. In that time, the services that pharmacists can offer have expanded. When you go to a pharmacy, often it’s probably just to pick up a prescription, but we can actually help with a lot more than that. We can provide advice and recommend over the counter medicines, offer some health checks and we can even give some prescription-only medicines for some conditions without you needing to see a doctor at all.
All community pharmacists have full training in managing minor conditions, with five years of education and training in the use of medicines before we qualify. So, we’re perfectly placed to be able to help you with a range of minor illnesses. There are also certain conditions we can treat without you needing a GP appointment or a prescription first. If it’s appropriate, we can give some prescription medications, such as antibiotics or antivirals, for things like earache, impetigo, infected insect bites, shingles, sinusitis, sore throat and UTIs. We can also provide without a prescription oral contraception and the emergency contraceptive pill.
You don't need to book in to come and see us, and we even have a private consultation room so you can talk to us confidentially. I think coming to us also helps patients to feel in better control of their health - if you have a sore throat that’s bothering you, for example, you can walk down to your pharmacy at a time that suits you. At our pharmacy we now have regular patients who welcome being able to come in and do this because it’s simple, convenient and it saves them time.
I do sometimes see cases of people who haven’t wanted to bother their doctor with a minor health issue, but because they waited it ends up getting much worse. My advice is, don’t just ‘wait and see’ if it gets better. Take control of your health, go and see your local pharmacy team and we’ll assess you. If it turns out to be something more serious, or something that needs a different type of health professional to resolve it, we’ll help you find the most appropriate local NHS service instead.
For more information, visit nhs.uk/thinkpharmacyfirst
