Pharmacies

Like you, I have experience of two pharmacies.

For my first few diabetes years, I worked near Boots. This was a large city centre store.
At first there were a few IT hiccups but they ironed them out*. The individuals were very good. At one point, they didn't have something in stock but were expecting it that afternoon so delivered it to my office. Another time they didn't have something in stock. the pharmacists recognised my address and realising she walked past my house on the way to work, offered to drop it in.

Since I changed jobs, my nearest pharmacist has been a local (suburban) pharmacist which is part of the Well chain.
I have come to realise what an excellent pharmacist is.
They are located a couple of doors from my GP surgery and are used to mistakes on the prescription. They don't bat an eyelid (although there maybe a little eye rolling) when the GP has prescribed the wrong thing again.
When they didn't have some insulin in stock, they phoned local pharmacists (including competition such as Boots) and reserved some for me.
I now have my flu jab in a relaxed environment at my pharmacy rather than face the surgery melee.
When I was thinking of self funding the Libre, the pharmacist told me they had them on prescription (my DSN had told me they were not available in my area), found out how much he could sell them for and offered to get them in just for me. Unfortunately, they were not one of the cheapest so decided to go for Asda. But no ill-feelings.

I guess the moral of the story is that any pharmacist is as good as the individuals working there regardless of their corporate overlord.


*can you iron out hiccups or am I over mixing my metaphors?

Sorry no been a long time since I used Boots the grocery store for dispensing stuff but have always found that end of the shop helpful when asking about getting medication for other things.

Round our way I use the Pharmacy attached to the Surgery, they are great in there and because I have been going in for so long they know who I am. Not much help I know.

I switched to Boots after a serious of arguments and failure to issue all the items I had ticked on my repeat prescriptions at another chain. My branch of Boots has been excellent over the past four years. There has been one error, but it was corrected rapidly with apologies. The previous pharmacy had seemed unable to deal with a list of repeatable items that ran to more than one page. I know a cousin in Manchester has switched to his local Boots for similar reasons and has reported a similar improvement.

However, the real answer is that individual pharmacies differ, even if they are part of a chain.You will have to try them out for yourself.

Boots varies a lot from branch to branch - depends totally on the pharmacist in there. At my previous Boots, they were awful for giving me the wrong stuff - even other people's stuff, so you had to be really careful to check before you left. Then the pharmacist changed and it got better. One thing I do like about Boots is that they will text you when it's ready to collect, rather than traipsing backwards and forwards several times. I had it set up so I ordered it online, the prescription got sent straight to boots, who then texted when everything was ready.

Many of the small boots are franchises, so are owned by the Pharmacist, so the service you receive at the counter depends on them, although they will use the Boots infrastructure for ordering etc

My local boots is utter c@@p and useless.
I use my local chemist, have my meds delivered. When I first moved to where I am, the lady that owned the chemist and was the head pharmacist was brilliant. She sold up and foreign lady took over. For a few months, it was chaos. Meds not made up. Meds taking ages to to get to the chemist when they had to be ordered in.
Luckily all sorted now. Only thing I have a problem with, the lady who took over, she has at times not being able to understand what is being said which can be frustrating. I now have a dossette box and never now have problems with getting meds.

As others have said , It is really down to the pharmacist, the local Boots where my parents lived ( a small market town ) was really very good and helpful and could not be faulted. I find my local Morrison’s very good and right next my doctors so prescriptions do not have far to travel . I think you just have try them out to see how they perform.