​

Sanders Pharmacy's Gemma Perry and Cameron Monteith, president of the Pharmacy Guild of New Zealand

PHARMACY GUILD COMMUNITY PHARMACY OF THE YEAR

This award recognises excellence in community pharmacy. It rewards a community pharmacy that has shown it understands its customers’ needs, is well managed, innovative and engaged in the local community. It has a focus on achieving business success as well as measurable positive outcomes for customers, especially during times of hardship and uncertainty.

WINNER: SANDERS PHARMACY
 

Heeding the words of prime minister Jacinda Ardern, Sanders Pharmacy adopted a go hard and go early response to the COVID-19 pandemic before it reached our shores.

“You could feel it in the air,” says pharmacy owner Gemma Perry. “Unlike Asian countries with SARS, this was not something we had experienced before, and it was not a time to sit around and wait to be told what to do. We had to be proactive.”

The pharmacy’s response started by closing the doors 10 days before the national lockdown and developing a barricaded walk-in zone with Perspex screens to protect staff, their families and patients. The pharmacy also extended opening hours and staff were split into two teams.

Based in Te Awamutu, Sanders Pharmacy serves a population of 20,000 with a staff of 20.

“We could see that this pandemic was blowing up internationally, and we were seeing really interesting data coming out. We were so lucky we had that window of opportunity to learn from what was happening overseas and we didn’t want to waste it,” Mrs Perry says.

The pharmacy shared what they were doing with the sector, and gained feedback that closing their doors would be bad for business. But the focus for management was on the approaching pandemic no one knew anything about, and how they could keep their staff and the community safe. The results speak for themselves. A recent customer survey reflected a very high level of satisfaction, with the pharmacy’s COVID-19 response as one of the reasons. Staff are also appreciative of the care management took to protect them, says Mrs Perry.

The response has also led to innovation in the way the pharmacy now communicates with clients, including texting when scripts are ready for collection and strong customer engagement on its Facebook page. During lockdown the pharmacy started working closely with the neighbouring medical centre to find new ways for the GPs and the pharmacy to help each other.

“COVID-19 has given us the freedom to be creative in how we operate and given us clarity about what’s important in the community and with our staff. It has given us opportunities to move forward, and our team is much stronger because we have been through it together,” Mrs Perry says.

Judges' comments:

Great innovation... strategic direction and leadership through COVID, which was clearly backed up by an engaged and highly capable team. Most will never fully understand the efforts that their community pharmacy team went to during this time

​

Looking after Rotorua’s most vulnerable during lockdown

 

FINALIST: RANOLF PHARMACY