New storytelling initiative to celebrate young people during the pandemic.
Our new storytelling initiative is part of our response to celebrating #pharmacyheroes during the COVID-19 pandemic.
It is about putting the spotlight on young people in community pharmacy – how they feel and what they’ve been doing during these challenging times to help keep patients and communities safe.
Over the next month or so we’ll be shining a light on the fact that many young people have been working very hard during the Covid-19 pandemic as key members of the pharmacy team and as volunteers helping get essential medicines to those who need them most.
Dan, from East Sussex, is a newly qualified pharmacist …
“After being qualified for just five months, my regional manager called and asked if I would like to manage a store temporarily while the regular pharmacist went off on maternity leave. I started on the 16th of March and one week later the government announced we were going into lockdown.
It was invaluable having a brilliant dispensary team around me whose judgement I trusted as we dealt with situations that none of us had ever come across before, such as translating a Cyprian ladies’ medication into English with a GP as she became stranded in the UK; sourcing epilepsy medication for a young man with learning difficulties when he hadn’t managed to get hold of it for several days; and delivering hundreds of prescriptions to shielded patients even when our regular deliverer had to isolate as a shielded patient.
Recently, as things calmed down a bit, my girlfriend, who is also a pharmacist, and I moved to a new house. As we were unpacking boxes we found a picture frame that read “Our special memory, April 2020” – it was supposed to be used with an image from a planned holiday to France, but the only picture we have from that time is a selfie, taken as we left the pharmacy together having just worked a 14 hour shift alongside another member of the team. We have it on our mantlepiece to remind us of the amazing work we did during the COVID pandemic.”