Reflections: A legacy of care

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I want to introduce you to two women who are very dear to me. 

The first is my grandmother, Kartar Kaur. Her name was tattooed on her arm – and that is how she taught herself to read. The second is her daughter, my mother, Gurbakhsh Kaur – the first woman in our family to be formally educated. It is partly because of them that I am a pharmacist and the first ever female vice-chair of the NPA.

As a little girl, I used to stand at the pharmacy counter beside my mother, translating from Punjabi into English so she could understand her medicines, learning healthcare without even knowing it.

Celebrating women 

Last month I had the opportunity to tell more of my story to dozens of women pharmacists gathered at the House of Lords. Alongside me at the reception were three other female members of the NPA board – Sehar Shahid, Joanne McMullan and Aisling O’Brien. We gathered to celebrate the contribution of women in pharmacy, but also to give a boost to female pharmacy leadership, by bringing people together to learn from one another and establish support networks.

I was very aware, making my speech, that I was standing on the shoulders of other wonderful women who have served in leadership positions before, at the NPA, within communities and elsewhere. Approximately 60% of pharmacists and 85% of pharmacy technicians are women (although the proportion who are owners is, tellingly, far lower). 

I’m sometimes asked if women in pharmacy provide clinical care differently from our male counterparts. Well, I don’t know about that. But I would say that excellent patient care plus compassion and collaboration in the workplace are central to the formula for pharmacy business success.

Perhaps you have been that woman who recognised a bruise that had nothing to do with a fall. The one who took an extra five minutes with a patient who could not find her words. The one who handed over the morning-after pill with kindness, not judgement. The one who held space for a mum in menopause – finally feeling heard. 

Selfless service

In the 1.8 million conversations that take place in community pharmacies across this country every day are the reasons so many women as still standing – especially those who fall through every other gap. 

That is ‘sewa’ – selfless service – the word my grandmother gave to me. Long before community health was a strategy or a service line it was an ethos, built by women of every tribe, in every century. What we now call community health, women have simply called ‘life’!

Taking a person-centred approach like that in no way means overlooking the financial side of running a pharmacy.  On the contrary, it is likely to be the surest and most sustainable way to underpin commercial success, especially for independents.