This case study will enable you to consider your approach in supporting a newly-qualified colleague with professionalism when counselling a patient.

Part 1: You manage the pharmacy support team. During the course of your day, you observe your newly qualified colleague, Sarah, handing out a prescription to a regular patient, Mrs Jones, without offering her any advice or counselling.

• What would you say to Sarah?

Part 2: Sarah is observed another four times with different patients and her advice and counselling was correct. One month later, Mrs Jones comes back to your pharmacy to collect her prescription and you observe that Sarah is not offering advice again and appears to be offhand with the patient when handing out the medication. Mrs Jones looks upset as she stands at the counter.

• How would you deal with the immediate situation?

Part 3: When you speak to Sarah, she explains that the patient is her former teacher from secondary school and she feels embarrassed about offering her counselling.

• How do you explain professionalism to Sarah?

Part 4: The following month, Mrs Jones comes in to collect her regular prescription.

• What should Sarah do?

What’s next?

Now that you have completed the activities, you might like to:

• Revisit the learning objectives. Are you confident that you have achieved these?
• Go back over the ethical dilemmas, scenarios and case study and discuss the answers with your pharmacist and team.