This month Retail Pharmacy Assistants spoke with pharmacy assistant Rianne Cooper from Gatton Plaza Discount Drug Store in Queensland about her career highlights, challenges and tips for other pharmacy assistants and staff.
How long have you been working in retail pharmacy?
Since I left high school. I started in January of 2008, so I’ve been working in pharmacy for 14 and a half years. I’m a qualified level 4 pharmacy assistant in community pharmacy.
What does a day in your working life look like?
My main duties are customer service, as I’m the main point of contact for the customers that walk into the pharmacy.
I take in prescriptions, hand out prescriptions and am the communication that happens between the customer and the pharmacist.
I’m constantly providing customers with healthcare advice and information and helping them select the correct products that suit their needs. I also look for when I need to refer them on to a pharmacist for continuing support and information.
In addition to the above, offering advice on lifestyle tips and providing appropriate companion products to customers where it’s necessary to do so are also core to my role. I listen to all my customers’ concerns and treat everyone with the utmost respect and dignity.
When I’m not serving or supporting our customers directly, I’m taking phone calls, refilling the shelves, filing prescriptions, tidying the counters, and making sure that everyone understands their jobs for the day.
I also look after the NDSS products. Daily, I’m making sure these items are stocked up and special orders are being processed so customers have access to their products when they need them.
How did you come to work within the industry? What drew you towards a profession in retail pharmacy?
It all started when I finished high school and saw a newspaper ad for a full-time traineeship for a Certificate II in community pharmacy. I’d always been interested in the healthcare profession and retail /pharmacy was very intriguing to me – it still is.
From the moment I started, I knew it would be a profession I could grow into a career for myself. I loved the customers. They became my family. And it was so rewarding knowing I was genuinely making a difference in people’s lives.
That was my driving force then, as it is today.
What are some of the highlights in your career as a PA?
The biggest highlight for me is being recognised for hard work and dedication.
I’m so proud of continuously pushing myself to grow and strive to be a better pharmacy assistant. To this end, I’ve done several courses in community pharmacy with the Pharmacy Guild to further my education and help myself deliver professional healthcare advice and lifestyle tips to my customers.
In May 2016, the Pharmacy Guild awarded me with ‘student of the month’ recognition, which was a great achievement and a true honour. Since then, I’ve also been nominated several times for ‘employee of the month’ with my current employer. It’s so rewarding to have my achievements recognised. I enjoy being a mentor and a role model to all my team members.
However, my biggest achievement, which I’m most proud of, is being nominated as Pharmacy Assistant of the Year in 2019.
What has been the most challenging part of working as a retail pharmacy assistant?
Like most within the healthcare space, the biggest challenge is often change. It’s not uncommon to hear of new rules and regulations coming into effect, and this can cause a ripple effect.
Therefore, it’s important that we treat all changes with professionalism and show compassion and sympathy towards our customers in times of change.
Keeping up to date on current product information is also challenging. There’s a lot to learn and stay informed about. This requires you to be proactive and commit to constantly indulging yourself in doing the training activities, to be able to offer the correct healthcare advice – even if this means additional training, joining accredited websites, refreshing your QCPP knowledge, watching webinars and/or going to after-hours training nights. It all helps you to stay up to date.
Is working in retail pharmacy something you think you’ll be doing in the long term?
Yes, absolutely. I’ve dedicated almost 15 years to pharmacy and I don’t plan to stop anytime soon. I’ve worked very hard to get to where I am, and I hope to keep inspiring and mentoring young staff to be the best they can be.
How important is ongoing professional development for retail pharmacy assistants?
This is extremely important. Without ongoing development, there’s no way to adapt to the ongoing changes in the industry. Professional development in the way of ongoing training is crucial in us being able to provide ongoing support and healthcare needs and advice to our customers. After all, knowledge is power.
How would you describe working as a retail pharmacy assistant to anyone new to or considering the profession?
Retail pharmacy is the best of both worlds.
It’s all about working directly with the community to allow them to be able to shop for all their health and beauty needs while offering and delivering the most up-to-date advice on all their prescription medication inquiries, medical conditions, and in-house services such as blood pressure testing, diabetes glucose testing, weight loss and more.
It’s so rewarding to be the first point of contact for the community. Retail pharmacy is where the customers have that direct access to you and rely on you to have all their healthcare needs met, and their questions and concerns addressed.
What is your advice to other retail pharmacy assistants in terms of achieving career goals and stepping up within the industry?
My advice would be to never stop learning, never think you know it all. You can never know it all in an ever-evolving industry that is constant!
Be proactive. Take as many courses as you possibly can, attend after-hours training nights that company representatives host, join up to every pharmacy training website/portal you can, to be able to constantly learn and grow and to be the best you can be.
Don’t be frightened to ask your colleagues or your retail manager a question. If you’re unsure of where to go to achieve your goals, always talk to your employer or contact the Pharmacy Guild so they can guide you in the right direction.
There are endless opportunities available to pharmacy assistants to help them achieve their goals and advance in the industry.
Retail pharmacy (like the healthcare industry generally) has faced some serious challenges over the past 18-plus months with Covid. Where do you see the industry headed in the next few years?
I think pharmacies will lead the way with relieving the ever-mounting pressure from our strained GP network. The government is constantly finding ways for pharmacies to once again be on the frontline in offering vaccination programs and other healthcare needs to the community.
I don’t think this will change, and as the years’ progress, pharmacies will only get busier serving the public with these essential healthcare needs.
If you could change/improve one thing about the industry, what would it be?
The pharmacy industry continues to evolve and, as part of this evolution, it would be great to see all pharmacy computer programs updated to include visibility over patient dispensing history, to make us run more efficiently and more smoothly and support our customers.
Further, greater consideration should be given to ‘hospital line only’ dressings being made readily accessible for patients through pharmacies. It can be a negative experience when a patient is told to buy their own dressings once they’ve been discharged from hospital care, only to find out the dressings they need and have been told to purchase cannot be bought in retail pharmacy. We should be able to meet these simple requests for our patients.
This feature was originally published in the June issue of Retail Pharmacy Assistants e-magazine.
