The winner of the Independent Pharmacist of the Year Award was Laura Sharp of D & R Sharp Chemist of Bentley, Doncaster.

Since qualifying as a pharmacist, Ms Sharp has worked closely with the local pharmaceutical committee and the clinical commissioning group to develop services relevant to local needs. She has designed an emergency asthma kit for local schools. Along with this goes training on how to use the inhalers and their maintenance.

As a result of this initiative, Ms Sharp has been invited to help the CCG develop an asthma service, directed at children, to prevent exacerbation, hospitalisation and death. She has helped to develop a falls prevention service and provided many falls prevention reviews. The service has been successful, resulting in numerous changes to medication.

A lung-health service launched in 2015 sees direct referral from the pharmacy
to the x-ray department at Doncaster Royal Infirmary. The aim of the service is to detect COPD, emphysema and lung cancer at an early stage. Ms Sharp is an active provider of the service and helped in its development. She has recruited more patients than any other participating pharmacy and gave a presentation on the
service at this year’s Pharmacy Show.

She provides an advanced smoking cessation service for the whole Doncaster area, where, as an independent prescriber, she can prescribe Champix and NRT under the NHS for patients not covered by Doncaster’s NHS patient group direction. Miss Sharp says that she strives to put patients first. She has been known to drive across South Yorkshire to pick up medicines from another pharmacy for a patient, and argue a patient’s case with a GP.

Presenting the award on behalf of sponsor Numark, John D’Arcy (managing director) said that Numark was delighted to be associated with what was a celebration of community pharmacy. Day in, day out on the ground, community pharmacy was making a big difference. Understandably, Numark was not too happy with what was being proposed in terms of the cuts. More investment was needed in community pharmacy, not less. The big problem the NHS had was in meeting public demand.

Miss Sharp said that she was incredibly lucky working in Doncaster. It really was
an innovative area. The commissioning body was really interested in pharmacy. Referring to the chest X-ray project, she said that she was hoping that Macmillan would be interested in it and that it might become a national service. Miss Sharp said that while community pharmacy had lost support at a national level, with support at the local level it would be able to provide the high standard of service that patients expected.

Miss Sharp said that she was currently working part-time with a GP practice to try to increase her clinical skills. Working with GPs would provide a more seamless service for patients. She saw that as the way for the future. She was doing a clinical diploma.

Miss Sharp thanked her father, also a pharmacist. He had made her the pharmacist that she was today.