Page 41 - RPA May 2020

How to differentiate your space
The key to a successful vitamin and mineral supplement (VMS) space is making it more than just another sales opportunity, according to Community Pharmacist and Master Herbalist Gerald Quigley, who suggests it’s about making it a space that helps people.
“If it becomes a solution focused area, then there’s the difference,” he said. “That’s what it has to be.”
Mr Quigley also says having well informed staff is key.
“You have to have informed staff to be available to help, guide and reassure, bearing in mind that a lot of people have made up their mind on what they want before they go into a pharmacy in the first place,” he said.
The way to make the supplement space different and unique, according
to Mr Quigley, is “to have someone in that section all the time who knows what they’re doing”.
Due to the plethora of supplements and companies on the market, delving into the VMS space may seem daunting initially. But if a retail pharmacy wants to stock supplements, the first step, according to Stay Well Pharmacy Pharmacist Mark Webster, is to
“start with the basics”.
“Start with something and get good
at it,” he suggested. “You might want to pick a particular area. Maybe you want to look at supporting cardiovascular health or diabetes, or you maybe want to be a pregnancy [and] preconception guru ... [then] start small, start simple.
“[You] have to decide what [you] want to be and what areas of expertise [you] want to have. [You] need to decide what products or range of products [you’re] going to stock. [Pharmacies] need to decide on how much information they’re going to get from the company and
how vividly they’re going to question the company about the source of
the product.”
Becoming an expert in a health area, Mr Webster says, will help pharmacies stand out from the crowd, especially the online and discount pharmacy space, while also helping with inter- and intra-professional partnerships.
VITAMINS AND SUPPLEMENTS 39 in Integrative Medicine through the US
based George Washington University. “I [initially] just did little courses, then
different companies would come through [and] I’d go to the training,” he said.
To get a “really good grounding” in the vitamin and mineral space, Mr Webster advocates “the primary course” through the Australasian College of Nutritional and Environmental Medicine.
Plant-based nutrition: the role of VMS
One area a pharmacist may choose
to specialise in is the growing area of plant-based nutrition. A Roy Morgan report from 2018 showed that 12.1 per cent of those surveyed in Australia had “diets of which the food is all, or almost all, vegetarian, up from under 11.2 per cent four years ago in 2014”.1
When working with customers who have a plant-based diet – those who are vegetarian or vegan, for example – it is recommended that pharmacies should approach certain issues from a nutrition perspective. While dietitians tend to agree that a well balanced, plant-based diet can provide adequate macro- and micro-nutrients, they say key vitamins and minerals to consider include
vitamin B12 (particularly for vegans), vitamin D, iron, calcium, zinc, iodine, choline and protein.
Charlene Grosse, Accredited Practising Dietitian and Spokeswoman for the Dietitians Association of Australia, says that while both “vegetarian and vegan diets can be considered healthy”, the problem comes when “we don’t get
a good balance of all food groups, or the vitamins and minerals within those groups”.
“We want to make sure ... when we’re taking out food groups, so say for a vegan diet ... that we’re getting the vitamins or the minerals ... from other alternative sources,” she said. “The big one for the vegan diet would be calcium,
TO PAGE 40
“If you become an expert in one area, that actually protects you, because that’s [the sort of customer] you [will] attract: [the] people ... [who] want a much higher level of knowledge than they’re going to get from the internet or the discounter,” he said. “It also makes it very easy for you to refer to a colleague who’s an expert in another area or have them refer to you.”
Mr Quigley and Mr Webster agree that the way to become an expert or a specialist in a field is education and professional development.
“That means you go along to a supplier event, and there are a lot of professional supplier events on all the time ... There are some outstanding nutrition based conferences from companies like Blackmores, Bioceuticals,” Mr Quigley said. “There’s a whole string of companies where pharmacists would feel very at home with their peers.
It’s about having access to the most up- to-date information.”
Mr Webster said: “I started doing six- and seven-hour courses when I was in the UK, through the University of Manchester.”
He has since completed the Master of Science in Health Science program
RETAIL PHARMACY ASSISTANTS • MAR 2020