Hi Ned, once again, a very kind offer from you, and a great suggestion as to how to “apply” for your amazing calendars. I’ve only ever flown as a PPL(H) when I had the time, but my day job is a Pharmacist in the UK, so as you can imagine, this year has been tough. I found an email I wrote to a family member in April 2020 at the start of the pandemic, and it reflects what was going on then in community pharmacy:
It's a very scary place at the minute, working on the frontline. When the initial news broke, the world went mad, and the issues faced by the supermarkets were replicated in Pharmacy. We had people panic ordering prescriptions for all sorts of things, and as a result, the workload went through the roof. At the same time, we lost staff due to self isolation and childcare commitments, and as a result, our pharmacies, like all community pharmacies sank under the volume of work! Couple with that, the fact that the doctors surgeries closed their doors to just about anyone, meant that people had nowhere else to go for advice and reassurance than to the Pharmacy. So we had people walking into our stores coughing and with a raised temperature, asking what they should do. This was despite big notices everywhere, telling people not to do that! My wife (also a Pharmacist) and me were supposed to be on holiday last week, but had to give that up to go into our pharmacies to bail them out and support our teams.
We struggled initially with getting basic food items and other household essentials, as we were in work at 7:30am and often not finishing until 7:30pm, by which time, when we went into the supermarkets, there was nothing left. We were down to our last toilet roll at one stage, and I told my wife we'd need to start tearing up the newspaper in the garage! We couldn't buy a loaf of bread, or any fresh fruit, and then, I couldn't find a potato anywhere! It was getting really difficult, and quite frankly, annoying and upsetting that people were being so selfish. There was a video on social media that went viral of a nurse crying because she couldn't get any basics and we too felt like that. We've both cried more than I can ever remember, in the last 2 weeks, as the stress and strain have taken their toll on us. We've seen the very best, and the very worst in people during this time, and even the slightest gesture of kindness, sees us both blabbing again! Last Thursday at 8pm, (the first night of clap for carers) I said to my wife, shall we open the front door and listen if we can hear any clapping, as we felt sure, in our little cul-de-sac, there would be no one out. Oh how wrong we were! There was clapping, cheering, saucepans being banged and our names being called out - that made us cry too! With some of the supermarkets now introducing special NHS shopping times, it has made things a bit easier, but even now, we don't have many of those times to choose from, as were working most of them. At one of our lowest points, in terms of getting food, we had a knock at the door on a Sunday, and there was a delivery from my brother, a Fortnum & Masons hamper of provisions. Not just any old hamper, but an F&M hamper, that made us cry again!!
We've been working now for two and half weeks solid, pretty much, including weekends, just to try and get on top of everything. All of this with NO personal protective equipment (PPE). Finally, this week, we are starting to see some form of PPE arriving in our stores which may help us to avoid contracting Covid19. We've still got a long way to go, in this crisis, but I'm hoping that people can now see, that community pharmacy is going to be there for them throughout this period, and so hopefully, things will slow down a little for us. Our main priority, at this time, is the protection of ourselves and our staff. It's very hard to "social distance" in a busy pharmacy and so the PPE will hopefully help the team protect themselves from one another.
So that pretty much sums up my 2020, and hopefully gives a small insight into how it affected community pharmacy in the UK.