WORLD PHARMACISTS DAY 2022
“Pharmacy united in action for a healthier world” is the theme of World Pharmacists Day on 25 September 2022.
Your local community pharmacist and their colleagues working in the hospital and general practice are helping to transform health through a variety of health services in their communities. These include advising on healthy living, vaccinating to prevent disease, and most importantly helping patients to ensure that their medicines are taken correctly to enable them to live their best life.
Pharmacists are an untapped resource, they have five years of professional training and are available throughout the community, and usually without an appointment.
Enhanced services that pharmacists may provide include medication review, warfarin monitoring, a range of vaccinations, emergency contraception, treatment for urinary tract infections, treatment for erectile dysfunction and repeat prescriptions for the oral contraceptive pill.
They also provide subsidised consultations and treatment for children aged 2-14 years who have bacterial conjunctivitis which means treatment can be started immediately.
Your local pharmacist can also assess for mild dehydration and provide oral rehydration with Pedialyte fluid for children aged 3 months to 16 years at no charge.
Many clinical services can be provided by phone call if you’re unwell and not able to come into the pharmacy, or if you want to protect others in the community and the pharmacy team.
It is now the practice to email your prescription to the pharmacy but you must still give the dispensary team time to print it out and do their normal processes safely, so if it is a repeat of your usual medications and if not urgent, please allow at least 24 hours before collection.
These include checking that the medicine, the dose and the instructions are right for you, (your prescriber will be contacted if there are any concerns), that the medicine will not interact with anything else you are taking and that you receive any entitled funding.
Please don’t come in without a mask (we will provide one if necessary) if you are unwell with cold and flu symptoms. Or please send someone else in to get the medicines, or have a phone consultation.
Your locally owned community pharmacist is an important part of your healthcare team. Please support them, ask them questions about your medicines and your health and wellbeing. Their accessibility during the COVID Alert Level 4 and 3 lockdown was appreciated by all members of the community and other healthcare professionals. They worked incredibly long and stressful hours to maintain the medicine supply, while keeping themselves and their whanau safe.
We thank and celebrate Community Pharmacists for their amazing contribution to the health and wellbeing of our
communities.