Essential Services
Pharmacists will provide you with your prescribed medicines labelled with the appropriate directions. Before supplying the medicine the pharmacist has to make sure that it is appropriate for you. As pharmacists are the experts in medicines, the advice they can provide to you and other health care professionals can be very helpful.
You should always tell your pharmacist if you are having any problems with your medicines.
If you have any medicines that you no longer use, you can take them to your local pharmacy for safe disposal. This will mean that there are less unwanted medicines stored in people's homes.
- It is estimated that between £2-8 million is wasted each year in Coventry on medicines that are not taken by patients. Please don’t order repeat medicines if you don’t need them!
- Your pharmacy can provide you with advice and information on keeping healthy; this could be advice on healthy eating, stopping smoking and exercise.
- Your pharmacy will also take part in local health promotion campaigns on specific topics like taking care in the sun and understanding the risks of diseases like diabetes.
- Your pharmacy will be able to provide you with contact details for any additional help you need from other health care professionals, social services or voluntary organisations. There may also be self help groups locally that can give you extra support and care.
- Your pharmacy can provide you with advice on treating minor illnesses, such as coughs and colds, or long term conditions such as arthritis or diabetes. This support may include medicines you can buy over the counter from the pharmacy without a prescription.
Local Enhanced Services
Local Enhanced Services are services that your local primary care trust (PCT) will ask your community pharmacist to provide to meet a specific local need. Not all local pharmacies will be involved in providing all these services.
Enhanced Services provided by Coventry pharmacies include:
- Prescription Intervention schemes
- Pharmacy First
- Emergency Hormonal Contraception service
- Stop Smoking service
- Needle/Syringe exchange
- Phlebotomy
- Weight Management service