How do we best train staff? Yeah, good

question.

I think it all starts with making training, education and learning easier.

part of your work culture to begin with.

So what that can look like is when an assistant or a student comes to you, the pharmacist, for guidance on a particular patient that they've been consulting with and they need your help for the next step.

It might be depending on where, you know, that student or that assistant is at in their own, you know, learning journey.

If they have got enough information that you can help them put the pieces together and you might just be coaching them through that, but then they can get to, you know, a safe and appropriate treatment for that patient, then you've just helped them kind of bridge over and synthesise recommendations from information they already have.

How can pharmacists further assist patients in terms of minor ailment management?

What should the pharmacist be mindful of in terms of the patient profile? So for example, adult versus a child.

Yeah and I think that's one of the first and biggest kind of points that we talk through with patients because often when the one person in the family gets sick everyone gets sick but it is not a one-size-fits-all treatment you know that you can take home back to your family and you know it works for everybody.

Management in children looks very different to management in adults.

there is actually a lack of evidence of efficacy and potential risks that are associated with using any non-prescription cough medicines in children aged less than 12 years, right? So if we start with that, We then break it down further and blanket statement and rule, cough medicines should not be used in children aged less than six years old, right? But then that brings us to the middle point of children aged between six to 11.

These children can be treated for their cough, but only on the advice of a doctor, a pharmacist or a nurse practitioner.

So within that category, if a child is presenting with a chesty cough, we can absolutely, if it's appropriate and safe for them, recommend bromhexine, which is fantastic for treating a chesty cough.

But where possible, we do recommend that children are managed non-pharmacologically.

And I think that's an individual consideration based on what you know about the patient and the questions that you've asked.

And how can pharmacists assist in this self-select market?

Yeah, look, the cough and cold section of any pharmacies is one of the biggest categories.

And I remember as a pharmacy student being so intimidated and overwhelmed by the wide range that, you know, we would have available in our pharmacy.

And I would think, I will never understand all these different products.

But really, it's actually fascinating.

Not that bad.

Once you get to know your products and what works well for who, and this is where pharmacists really play their part.

it like now?

So I think ultimately we do have to ask those relevant history questions about symptoms in order to help the patient determine whether or not it's a dry or a chesty cough or a combination of the two.

I think the thing to note is that patients don't always recognise the difference between a cough.

They might present to the pharmacy and they'll say to us, I've got a cough.

And of course, our next question is always, well, what type of cough have you got? And it's almost always followed by them imitating what their coffee is like in front of us at the counter.

And that usually tells us that there's kind of that lack of knowledge or an information gap in how they're able to describe their symptoms.

So That understanding of whether it's a dry or a non-productive cough where there's no mucus versus that chesty or productive cough that is associated with mucus, with phlegm and that congested chest feeling.

So as pharmacists then, we are constantly having to guide our patients to open up and use words to help describe what that cough is like.

Anything more than three weeks is not considered to be an acute cough and someone needs to be referred if it's going for longer than that.