Some summers ago, I was lucky enough to work as a student at an interesting Pharmacy in Sydney. The pharmacy was particularly eye-opening for two reasons; the staff and the trains. It was before I graduated, and proved an important experience, with some vital lessons in staffing and a solid Training Ground. This is the final in the series. You can read the rest of the series here, here and here.

At least one of the shop assistants at the Training Ground was terrible. I mean, dead set dangerous, unsafe. Now, I've got an optimistic attitude to shop assistants; they're the cornerstone of community pharmacy. This saga is not designed to "beat down" on Pharmacy Assistants, quite the opposite. Indeed, the tale serves as a lesson of How Not to be a Pharmacy Assistant. It is, thankfully, the exception to the many fantastic techs I've worked with, and relied on in Pharmacy.

Shelly was in her early thirties, and had been in pharmacy for three years. Shelly thought she knew it all. She was known say so in her piercing, sing-song baby voice. Instead, however, her practice of pharmacy was based on a few principles;

1. Always use the strongest thing you can think of, every time.
2. Skin means steroids.
3. If you give someone no choice, they will buy it.
4. All customers are infinitely more stupid than Shelly.
5. All pharmacists are a waste of space and glorified babysitters. They don't know anything about 'real' pharmacy.

Of course, these prinicples are all horribly flawed. Two incidents really sparked my concern that, in addition to atrocious customer service, complete with snide remarks about customer's clothing or ethnic background, really began to worry me.

In the first instance, a bloke in his sixties came in for some cold and 'flu medication. Pretty run of the mill, however, before Shelly even thought to ask, the man mentioned he'd had a heart attack and a 3 vessel CABG four weeks earlier.

He used the words "Open heart surgery", and mentioned his crackingly high blood pressure. No worries, says Shelly, reaching for some pseudoephedrine-loaded Codral. Alarm bells are ringing. Luckily, the patient saves his own skin by asking to talk to the pharmacist. Shelly mooches off in a huff after her suggestions a shot down in a ball of "Safe and Appropriate Medication" flames.

Not to be perturbed by a lack of knowledge or practical skills, Shelly goes about treating a young skater for a sore ankle. And by sore, I mean visibly broken. The kid hobbles in and perches on one of the shop's stools, whilst Shelly begins to 'help' him. I was actually surprised that Shelly was even serving this kid, considering her previous comments about skateboarders.

Nonetheless, she fetches him some ibuprofen, saying loudly "That is everything you'll need." At this point, I got 'ballsy' and sat next to the guy. Considering his version of the mechanism of injury, marked bony deformity and swelling of his ankle and inability to walk on it, it was likely broken. He needed to see a doctor. I pointed him in the direction of the nearest Bulk-billing doctor and he and his mate rolled off. Meantime, Shelly had got the message - she didn't want to help the little punk anyway - but she came over and tried to tell me off for 'cutting her lunch'.

"You're just the student," she hissed. I reiterated that the kid's ankle was broken. The boss appeared and told her to 'pull her head in', and for the time being, she did. Later that day he had some stern words and provided remedial education about WHAM, and saliently, when to refer to the Pharmacist. I found out that she was sacked a few months after I returned to Uni. I'm sure she's still working in a pharmacy somewhere.