P&S Chemist wins Community Award at the 2015 PBA
The Community Award is for the independent community pharmacist who has played an outstanding role in service to the community, locally or nationally.
Shaheen Bhatia receiving the Community Award at the 2015 Pharmacy Business Awards, image courtesy of Asian Media & Marketing Group.
P&S Chemist, based in the ethnically diverse community of Ilford in Essex, is more than a part of its local community, in many ways, it is the fabric of the community.
Shaheen Bhatia, the pharmacist, and the rest of her team (Omera, pre-reg, now qualified pharmacist; Indu, dispensary manager; Tracy, technician; Chan, dispenser; Rothna, HCA) provide a wide range of services tailored to their local community which has resulted in a significant percentage of turnover being derived from these services and an increase in profit each year.
"They've absolutely gone to town in promoting health in their local community," one judge said. "the team handle patients in their own language. Historically, females in the community struggled to get sexual health advice but they were able to promote the fact that the pharmacy is a safe place to come and talk about sexual health needs."
Following feedback from patients, the sexual health services were designed to meet the needs of the local community where conversations about contraception are often taboo.
By providing a completely confidential service, the local women feel comfortable to drop into the pharmacy to seek advice and medication and, by word of mouth, this service has now spread further afield.
The sexual health service has evolved to include chlamydia and gonorrhoea testing. The team have also focused on child protection training and as a result have identified safeguarding issues which have been passed on appropriately.
The team also support clients through the stop smoking service and offer the services in a variety of different languages. Recently Shaheen has started to offer a range of travel vaccinations and anti-malaria medication in response to the number of people visiting Mecca and wider afield.
Health check days are also organised where the pharmacy team test large numbers of people, recently finding five people with raised blood pressure, with one man not taking his medication for over a year because he had no symptoms.
Article courtesy of the Pharmacy Business Awards 2015© . All rights reserved.
P&S Chemist, for the next few weeks will be undergoing a radical development in the shape of a complete new interior and exterior refurbishment. This will enable us to fulfil the vision of our pharmacist Shaheen Bhatia, to provide our award winning service with a bespoke health and advice centre, providing contemporary styling and our traditional quality of service. The intention is to reposition P&S Chemist beyond that of just a pharmacy. By providing health advice, a more dedicated form of monitoring patients health and well-being and crucially, being proactive in maintaining and even improving your health, before health problems occur. 
This micro-site (which you are looking at now), is a temporary stop-gap, whilst we realise Shaheen's vision for the future of P&S Chemist and pharmacy in general. The new website is what is known as a Content Management System, this will enable P&S Chemist to bring you the most up-to-date medical information and advice at your finger tips. Being constructed in three stages, the first will provide you with P&S Chemist's award winning health advice and information, for the local community and the rest of the world. The second stage, will enable a new level of consistent health care monitoring and MUR's (Medicine Use Reviews) that will change how we can monitor your health (plus much more, but we don't wish to spoil the surprises); with the final stage will be bringing the online ebay store in house, so that we can deal with your online shopping requirements directly.
