Portugal

Gabriela Plácido, Pharmacist

Area of work: Community pharmacist and manager

Describe your daily routine
 
I arrive sharply at the pharmacy at 0830, unless I am scheduled to participate in continuing education courses (either as a lecturer or participant).  Attending to customers is always a priority throughout the day, be it at the counter or answering any specific requests.  Together with my colleagues in the pharmacy, I provide point of care services such as blood pressure, blood glucose, cholesterol, triglycerides, and pregnancy tests.

Other tasks that form part of my routine but are not always done on a daily basis include researching drug information enquiries, contacting doctors, supervising staff in the pharmacy, planning educational courses for pharmacy staff and external programmes, organising themed health window displays in the pharmacy and providing information to the public in areas such as diabetes, hypertension, smoking cessation and urinary incontinence.

I also voluntarily work on Tuesdays to provide services and follow up on patients in a nearby province that involves four small towns.  My pharmacy regularly collaborates with the municipality to do cardiovascular screening tests, intervention projects for disadvantages families, public courses and health education for school students.  We also run a campaign to promote people to donate blood for the National Institute for Blood.

What are the greatest difficulties you encounter in your work environment?

It can be difficult to manage time and tasks in the pharmacy team, as there are not enough of us to be able to participate in all the projects we want to.  Sometimes its challenging to build capacity for community based project work and organise multidisciplinary teams who are motivated to do it and not be reimbursed for it.  On a daily basis, I need to reinvent new ways to motivate the team to provide an increasingly better service to the public and undertake continuing education activities outside of work hours, as well as manage pharmaceutical care services and patient follow up to encourage patients to return to the pharmacy.

What is the greatest motivation in your profession?

It's a cliché to say that it is my greatest motivation in my job is the willingness to help others, but it doesn't cease to be the truth.  The true reward is the acknowledgement of the service we provide by the public we serve.  I try to promote the message that the pharmacists’ role and contribution to society offers added value to public health services. I feel pride in seeing that the pharmacy that I manage has credibility in the population I serve and it motivates me to see that through continuous effort and persistence we can achieve increasingly better results.

If you could have one wish granted, what would it be?

In professional terms, my wish is to have the community pharmacists' intervention recognised as an added value in all health related issues by other professionals, the Portuguese state and by the society in general.  I would like to see professional bodies working together and organising themselves so that health professionals work with mutual respect and provide services that are complementary.