My proudest NHS moment

I will never forget this one patient who had schizophrenia and who had made several attempts to take her own life.

A local GP had rang me and asked if I could provide a weekly blister pack for this lady. The GP felt if the patient was only given a week of medication at a time, it may reduce the harm if she did take them all, but I knew we could support this patient even more. I worked with her social worker, family, hospital consultant psychiatrist and GP to review her medication and simplify her medication regime to once-daily dosing only. We then arranged for her to visit the pharmacy every day to take her medication. We did this with the full support of the patient and all the NHS professionals involved in her care. If she didn’t come to the pharmacy we would call her family or social worker to make sure she was ok. We watched the patient become more confident and actually the daily interaction between her and my team made her feel better. The care that we were able to provide for this individual, in the community, and the fact that we went above and beyond to empower her, along with the co-operation of my NHS colleagues, made us all feel proud. But it’s hard to pick just one proudest moment as my pharmacy team and I strive to do our best for our patients every day. We feel proud of the personalised care, attention and support we give to all of our patients in our local community and we achieve this by being part of the wider NHS and primary care services, locally. Over the years we have endeavoured to collaborate with our local NHS colleagues such as GPs, district nurses, dentists and local hospital teams, and we will continue to do so, so we can do the very best we can for all our patients.

Author: Reena Barai, NPA board member and owner of SG Barai Pharmacy in Sutton, Surrey.