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Saturday reflections... A leading light

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Saturday reflections... A leading light

Green Light Pharmacy prides itself on offering something a bit different from the average high street pharmacy. Founded in 1999 with the launch of its flagship store in Euston, the company was one of the very first pharmacy groups to focus their business model on services, long before schemes like the healthy living pharmacy initiative, for example, took off. With the recent acquisition of two more pharmacies, expanding its total to seven, Green Light Pharmacy remains at the forefront of pharmacy innovation, with community at its very core.

Making interventions

Green Light has truly taken up the call to "make every contact count". Each of the prescription items dispensed at its Euston branch is seen as an opportunity for a patient intervention.

For instance, patients about to embark on the Hajj or Umrah pilgrimage are signposted to the pharmacy’s travel clinic for vaccinations, while others may be candidates for medicines use reviews, smoking cessation, an NMS consultation, a health check or one of the local health and social care schemes the pharmacy supports. Over-the-counter sales, while making up a comparatively small percentage of turnover, also frequently spark interventions.

“Our practice model focuses on concordance and maximising pharmacist contact with the patient. We believe that everyone who comes into the pharmacy has a wider question about their health, and it is our job to see if we can get it out of them,” explains director John Foreman, who founded the company with fellow pharmacist Tim O’Donoghue.

Like the other branches, the Euston store layout is designed to facilitate customer interactions and navigation. The front-of-shop area is bright and uncluttered with the services on display; the team is clearly visible in the open dispensary; the main consultation room is accessible via two doors; and the counter includes private cutaway corners to aid discreet conversations.

“The pharmacy has been designed with privacy and confidentiality in mind,” says John. “We don’t like counselling from across the counter as it acts as a barrier and does not promote concordance. There are no steps up to the dispensary either, so we are not looking down on customers, and there is a nice flow to the pharmacy.”

Staff involvement

For Green Light Pharmacy to provide this level of care to its patients and customers, it is essential that it makes full use of its skill mix.

Green Light team members are recruited from the local community and come from ethnically diverse and often lower socio-economic backgrounds, which helps to bring down cultural and language barriers with customers. They are given plenty of opportunities and support to train and develop their roles, with many branches employing ACTs and health champions.

The company goes
one step further by encouraging its employees to become shareholders in the business, known
as partners, and involving all members of staff in key business decisions. With over 90 per cent of its staff owning shares, Green Light Pharmacy is an employee owned co-operative and a member of the Employee Ownership Association (EOA).

“The staff have a vested interest in the care and wellbeing of their customers and the community knows this. We have created wealth opportunities for everyone, helping them to buy their own homes or educate their children,” says John. “All of our business decisions are transparent, including the pay scales. Everyone gets to see the books and agree how much they should earn.”

Focus on education

Green Light has always had a strong focus on education and training and recently appointed one of its senior pharmacists, Simon Harris, as education and training lead to ensure that all team members keep their skills and knowledge up to date. As well as Simon, who is a CPPE tutor, the company has recently partnered with Sharon Hart Associates to deliver leadership training to its branch managers and pharmacists.

The group has offered placements to pre-registration pharmacists for the last ten years, and for the last two years has worked with UCL School of Pharmacy to deliver ‘Pharmacy Live’ – pharmacy practice workshops from a working pharmacy – to its undergraduates. This gives students a unique opportunity to develop their confidence and consultation skills through being exposed to real patients and real scenarios, all in real time.

Green Light's teaching centre is also used to deliver free training to other pharmacy teams and members of the wider health and social care community in conjunction with organisations like CPPE, UCL and the NPA, as well as local community groups.

For example, Green Light recently joined forces with pioneering HIV charity Body & Soul to deliver workshops on empathy and compassionate care, as well as local charity CITE (Communities Into Training and Employment) to support the delivery of an Enhanced Apprenticeship Programme.

As this external training offering grows, Green Light has established a sub-division purely dedicated to training, which will sit alongside Green Light Pharmacy and Travel Health under the wider banner of Green Light Healthcare Limited. The rebranding, says John, “avoids confusion” and reflects the company’s position as “a health and social care company”.

Holistic pharmacy

Green Light demonstrates its commitment to the local communities it serves through its involvement with various voluntary organisations.

For example, the Euston branch is the starting point for health walks around Regents Park run through the Walking for Health programme, with several staff members trained as walk leaders.

For the last ten years, the pharmacy has also been holding healthy living workshops in both English and Bengali to local groups in the seminar room. In addition, the company is getting involved with a ‘social prescribing’ pilot project run by the Bromley-by-Bow Centre, which signposts people to various services to help address the wider determinants of health, such as employment, finance and housing issues.

“We are an holistic pharmacy,” explains John. “We strive to 'put community back into pharmacy'. We need to understand that we are part of the community and to know what other organisations in the community are doing.”

All Green Light Pharmacies are currently going through the process of becoming accredited healthy living pharmacies (HLPs). John believes that the HLP initiative “formalises what (Green Light) has been doing for 15 years” and provides “a good benchmark” for delivering public health services.

Green Light’s newest pharmacies in Harrow and Victoria will gradually be transformed to bring their branding, services and ethos in line with the company’s other branches.

However, John insists it will not be a rushed process: “Sometimes it is best to take stock and consider what is best for the community. It takes the public roughly two years to realise that a pharmacy is practising a little differently and our new staff have to get to know our practice model. We are in no hurry; we are growing organically.”

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