A feature of isolated pharmacies is that for many people they are the first place they visit for their healthcare needs.
This is a clear feature of Terry White Chemmart, Mildura, a regional town in the northwest of Victoria, 550km from Melbourne and 400km from Adelaide, which boasts a population of about 60,000 people.
Proprietor Selwyn Patterson said that one factor that made his pharmacy unique is that it’s isolated from the point of view of medical services and specialist services.
“We probably become the first port of call for people with their health needs because in these rural areas it can sometimes take two to three weeks for people to get a doctor’s appointment,” he said.
“So, for any minor ailments, generally people will come to the pharmacy first before even trying to make an appointment, because if you have a problem now you might not have it in two to three weeks when you get in to see the doctor.”
Mr Patterson said another unique feature was that the pharmacy was the only one offering compound services in the region.
“We are the only compounding service with nothing between us and Adelaide,” he said.
“The next closest compounding pharmacy would be in Bendigo, which is about 400km away.
“In addition to that unique service, we provide sleep apnoea services to the community and to the hospital.
“We do all the other pharmacy services which you would expect, like home medicines reviews, DAA packaging, blood pressure testing, cholesterol testing, vaccinations.
“We have put in an Expression of Interest for doing COVID-19 vaccinations and will have to wait to find out if we have been asked to do those or not, but we will certainly put our hand up to be part of that.”
Being in a regional area presents some difficulties which may not be experienced by metropolitan pharmacies.
One of these was getting staff.
“I think it’s a challenge to get pharmacists to work in the major metropolitan areas, so it is a little bit harder to get staff in places like Mildura,” he said.
“However, Mildura probably has a lot more going for it than other regional areas as we have several daily flights from here to Melbourne, flights to Sydney.
“For people who want to get out of the place it’s not too hard – only a one-hour flight to Melbourne, two hours to Sydney and, once the COVID restrictions are fully removed, there will be a lot more of those flights back to normal.
“What I like about Mildura, because I’ve been here so long – almost 40 years – is the enjoyment of being a part of the community.
“A country town is not the place to be if you want to remain anonymous because when you walk down the street people are going to be saying hello to you all the time.
“I like that sense of community.
“You can walk down the street in Melbourne and no one even looks at you, but in Mildura wherever you go people will know you and say hello, and I think that is the strongest thing about working in a local community.
“Having been here so long I have been looking after two to three generations of the same families which is quite satisfying for me.
“You know the families, the family connections – because it’s such an isolated community. I can’t think of another community in Victoria which would be similar to Mildura because we are so far away from everywhere else.”
Mr Patterson said that like other pharmacies and businesses, COVID-19 brought unheard of and unexpected challenges.
“Rightly or wrongly, we put in a DAA sachet packing machine which come from Sydney,” Mr Patterson said.
“Because of all the COVID restrictions, they were not able to send any technicians or people to train us on the use of this machine, so we installed a packing machine and the only training we had was from the technician who came to install it.
“That technician was the only person who was able to come into Victoria, so that was certainly a big challenge.
“My manager of that store did a great job to get that machine up and running with very limited support.
“We also had to pivot from doing prescriptions from walk-in-the-door customers.
“We really embraced this and we use the MedAdvisor platform through Terry White Chemmart, and we had as many people using that as possible so they could order their prescriptions, leave their scripts on file and have them made up and delivered.
“We were doing ePrescriptions before their general release was supposed to happen, so we encourage that as much as possible as it means there is less people in the store.
“It was quite chaotic in the early phases of COVID. We had just so many people walking through the door wanting to have flu vaccines as well, so we were very, very busy.”
