My Working Day:Community pharmacist Tomas Conefreygets a kick out of serving his local community
I'm a community pharmacist in the family business, Conefrey's Pharmacy in Pearse Street in Dublin. My mother is the overall owner and she does the front of shop, while I am based mostly in the dispensary at the back.
I live in Bray so I get the Dart in and it takes me about an hour door to door. I spend a few minutes setting up then I open up the shop, and I'm more or less straight into it, doing prescriptions.
On a typical working day I'm at the mercy of whoever walks in or rings or whatever faxes with prescriptions come in. It changes from day to day and that's good, I think variety is important. It would get very monotonous if I was doing the same thing day in day out.
People just see the finished product; they come out with the pills or a bottle in a bag. But inside the dispensary we have to record all the information on our computer. We also have to check that the medication a person takes suits them. They might be taking other medications, so you need to make sure there's no clash between the two, or perhaps someone is asthmatic and they shouldn't be taking a certain type of tablet. People come in or ring up as well to ask can they take tablet A with tablet B.
I dispense the medication and print out a label with the instructions on it about how to take it. Then we can advise the patient further if they need it. On occasion we would go out to collect a prescription, fill it and bring it back out to them. We do that for elderly people who are housebound.
It's coming up on 53 years since the shop opened so we are well known within the community. We know a lot of our customers by name, and we even know their kids, the toddlers, by name. I thought for a while it was getting more impersonal, but it's coming back.
I try to take a holistic approach to people who come in. Someone might need antibiotics and I would talk to them about probiotics too - the antibiotics will kill off the good and the bad bacteria, and you should be taking good bacteria once you are finished the antibiotics.
I have been trying for the last while to develop an alternative medicine section in the shop, looking at things like aloe vera juice, which is great for stomach problems, and homeopathy.
I like to give people as much information as I can about things. If people are informed, I think they will be happier. It gives people a bit of power back if they know about their own health rather than just taking tablets and forgetting about it.
There's a lot of paperwork involved here, both for prescriptions and for the business end of it. I probably spend a bit more time doing that than I would like but it has to be done.
Outside of work I play tennis, and in October I trekked in China with Concern, so I did a lot of hillwalking in training for that, which was great for relaxation. I'm getting married next April so I'm looking forward to that.
I think the best thing about working here is that it's a very personal business, and I find it very satisfying if I help someone out and they come back and say thank you. Five of my patients nominated me for a 2007 Helix Health community pharmacist award, which I won last month. I was delighted because the patients are the reason we are here in the first place; it was a real boost. Someone said to me once that one person can make a difference, and that is what I get a kick out of.
In conversation with Claire O'Connell