Raising awareness of our health

A pharmacy with a focus on preventative health has found the COVID-19 experience has raised people’s awareness of the need to think more about their health and how to ensure it in times of crisis.

Linda Keane, proprietor of Dunsborough Pharmacy in Western Australia, said that when the pandemic first hit last year the pharmacy, like many others, saw a rush by patients seeking supplies.

“We started off by having that crazy month of March where everyone was panic buying and when we saw some people being rude and demanding,” she said.

“Unfortunately, these people really do affect you and we were doing everything we could to help them and meet their needs.

“But one thing we quickly identified was that fear was driving this behaviour.

“This fear in turn was driven by a lack of information because people didn’t know what to do and their anxiety levels went up.

“It was really a mental health issue that we were facing with our patients.”

Ms Keane said the coastal town of Dunsborough has a population of 5,000 normally and this swells to about 20,000 during peak holiday times.

“We realised very early on in the pandemic that we had to stay open for longer hours as the next town is 25 minutes away which is too far away when patients need urgent medication,” she said.

“We also realised we had to make the pharmacy COVID-safe for our patients and staff, so we changed the layout, installed sneeze screens and separated our staff into two teams.

“These decisions provided reassurance to the community and showed them we had their interests and wellbeing as our priorities.

“We were working ridiculous hours of 70 or more hours a week, which meant about 12-13 hours a day.

“Despite the long hours, we felt empowered that we were doing something positive, and we knew people were relying on us.”

Ms Keane said the way patients and the community reacted to the pandemic was also enlightening.

“Rather than kind of folding or crumbling, we saw how resilient people were and that resilience gave everyone energy,” she said.

“We also saw people become more focussed on the preventative side of health.

“This meant our health prevention side of things became very busy because people really started to think about their health and they really started to think: ‘If I don’t want to get COVID then what do I need to do to maintain myself and make sure that if I do get it, that I can fight it’.

“They also started to understand that a virus is not going to be killed by antibiotics and so they started taking a bit more control of things and being more in charge of their health outcomes.”

Ms Keane said Dunsborough had a reasonably a high socio-economic population with a large percentage of educated retirees.

Their ability to embrace technology was average to above, she believed.

“This means we have a lot of people on the MedAdvisor app and the GuildLink app ordering prescriptions and that really took off during COVID because people could be at home and order their scripts, then we would deliver them.”

Ms Keane said a particular strength of the pharmacy was its personal interaction with patients.

“For all of us who work in the pharmacy we know the value we provide includes regular contact; it’s knowing someone’s name, asking how they are – that mental health thing,” she said.

“This was really important during the pandemic.

“A lot of our patients live alone – they are lonely, and they come in and sometimes we are the only real social contact they have that day.

“Someone will come in with a script, but they don’t want to get all five at the same time – they get one today, and then three or four days later they come back and get the others.

“It’s because they want to have a reason for that contact – they could organise it differently, but they don’t want to and that’s where we are under-valued, and the Government is now starting to see that with the mental health side of things and the effects we have had with COVID-19.

“It’s actually giving us an opportunity to show what we can do.”