Dr Dai Lloyd, Plaid Cymru’s Assembly Member for South West Wales and Shadow Minister for Care and Public Services, visited Boots The Quadrant, Swansea today to hear first-hand how community pharmacy is supporting local healthcare needs.

Dr Lloyd met Nicola Bennett, Head of Customer Experience at Boots, Chris Taylor, Area Manager, Alex Williams, Store Manager & Chris Feliciello, Pharmacy Affairs Manager to hear how community pharmacy has been helping local residents this winter through services like the NHS flu vaccination service, as well as learning about the advice and support pharmacists provide for people who have coughs, colds and other symptoms.

He also heard about how to make better use of community pharmacy to improve the health and wellbeing of local populations, and to ease pressure on parts of the NHS.

Chris Taylor, Boots UK Area Manager, comments: “We were pleased to welcome Dr Lloyd to Boots The Quadrant today and speak about the great work the pharmacy team does in the local community.

“Community pharmacy teams are a trusted and very accessible part of the local community and we work hard to support people and provide a variety of healthcare solutions and services both online and in-store.

“Whilst a lot of our work is around supporting people to use their medicines correctly, we also help many people to make positive lifestyle changes, providing advice and guidance on topics such as healthy eating and smoking cessation. We offer many other services in-store, such as the NHS flu vaccination service and medicines use reviews, as well as a number of online clinics including erectile dysfunction, acne and hair loss.”

Dr Lloyd added: “Community Pharmacy teams are an integral part of the Primary Health Care Team and provide an invaluable service to all our communities.  With Primary and Secondary Care facing such challenging capacity issues, we must ensure that people are aware of the good work that is carried out by community pharmacy and of the services available. It is great to see so many services being delivered by local pharmacies in a range of areas, and people need to take advantage of what is on offer.”

Boots The Quadrant offers confidential consultation rooms where patients can access a range of pharmacy services, including flu, travel and HPV vaccination, alongside a complete range of healthcare products.