Pharmacy Services | Celebrating BWC Spirit

By Alison Tennant, Chief Pharmacist, Pharmacy

What was your experience of the pandemic?

Manic. As soon as we had sorted a new way of delivering services new guidance would come out and we had to make more changes. The ward teams had to completely change how they delivered services on the wards as they couldn’t visit all the patients anymore to check charts and top-up stocks. The Medicines Chest and Homecare teams were dealing with patients who were locked down at home but needed their medicines. In the first two months of lockdown, our normal activity trebled and we had to send out comms asking prescribers to ‘Think Toilet Roll’ so we had enough medicines to give everyone.

What was the hardest part?

The incredible amount of work that was the vaccine hub. We started in December looking at what was needed. We had to write 19 SOPs to be signed off by the region, a training package, learn how to handle medicines at -70⁰C, find answers to lots of questions and staff the pharmacy section of the vaccine hub. As for the most stressful time at the end of every shift to ‘land the plane’– the team effort of coordinating how many doses, when the doses expired and how many people to be vaccinated was incredible. The memory of the night it snowed and we had 60% DNAs will stay with me for a long time!  

How did you cope?

1. Leaning on each other. We had a board in Pharmacy where people could put requests for things they couldn’t get like flour, toilet rolls, and pasta and other people could bring in what they could share. All the staff were checking in with each other constantly and the kindness in the department was so obvious. We were very lucky in Pharmacy to have a fabulous team who responded to all the asks of them despite their fears and worries. 
2. Communicating – we used daily conference calls, emails and notices. We didn’t forget our shielding staff, we used Zoom catch-ups and sent parcels and cards.

What did you learn?

We learnt a lot about resilience and being kind to ourselves and each other. The team needed space and time to process what was going on, especially in the early days when everything was so strange. I had a note above my door which said ‘The only thing we can control is ourselves’. We acknowledged when there were mistakes and when we tried something and it didn’t work. We took time to check in with staff about how they were feeling and to listen. We allowed people to wobble and supported them to be able to keep delivering the services needed for patients. 

How do you think it changed the team?

It has boosted our confidence in what we can achieve. We can make rapid changes when needed. On one team conference call, I listed everything the team had achieved in the first four weeks of lockdown which was quite an emotional call for us all. The Pharmacy profession is very risk-adverse and we tend to need every I dotted and t crossed before we change anything. We were pushed out of our comfort zone but we coped.

The multidisciplinary work for the vaccine hub was another great thing that reminded us just how great we can be when working together using all the talents in the Trust 

Beyond your team, who has inspired you during the pandemic?

The Transformation team. We had to set up a new system of electronic prescriptions for doctors doing virtual clinics from home and put a medicines delivery hub into operation. GymShark were amazing support but we needed to co-ordinate five drivers a day with routes planned all over England. Their positivity and pragmatism were so needed at that stage. Without the Transformation Team helping us plan all the logistical details, sort the technical equipment and man the hub we could not have delivered the project so successfully.