General Information
Nantwich is a charming and picturesque market town lying in the rich farmlands of South Cheshire on a saltpit. It has a wealth of historic buildings and still today retains much of its ancient character. Whilst enjoying a rural setting Chester, Birmingham and Manchester can be reached within an hour. The main industry has been cheese production, grain and livestock. Today, Nantwich is still an agricultural trading centre with a large agricultural college, Reaseheath, on the outskirts. It has population of approximately 13,500. Population statistics show that the town has an above average proportion of elderly people and this is increasing. The ethnic makeup is almost entirely white.
The town has three GP practices of which two are participating in the project. The Beam Street Health Centre is the site for the two practices in the project, Drs Harris and Young and Drs Barron, Butcher and Holdsworth.
There are five pharmacies owned by Boots the Chemist, Safeway and P Williams Chemists, a local independent multiple. All of them are involved in the project and seven pharmacists have been trained.
Four of them are situated in town centre shops and the Safeway pharmacy in the Safeway Store. All are situated within a five-minute walk from the GP practices in the project.
Photos
These are forthcoming
Progress Update
The Community Pharmacy Medicines Management Project is well under way in Nantwich. The pilot phase was completed early in the summer and the feedback event held in August. This was a positive meeting and ironed out any slight problems we had.
We have six pharmacists participating which represent all the community pharmacies in the town. All of them enjoyed the pilot phase. Although they confessed to being nervous at first, all found the process of having protected time to speak to patients valuable and rewarding.
There have been several changes in personnel over the summer. We have lost David, the pharmacist manager for Safeway in Nantwich. Having worked very hard and saved some money David has resigned his position with the company to take a year out and travel around the world. Who can blame him? He has been replaced in the project by Sham Iqbal, the area pharmacy manager who has been trained and is eager to join the project. Nantwich also has a new local research co-ordinator, Lesley Hall who replaces Juanita Westbury. Finally and the biggest loss to me personally was when we lost Pam Naylor to foreign shores also. Pam and I were job sharing the role of local project co-ordinator when Pam found the home of her dreams in Southern France. We wish David, Juanita and Pam well and thank them for all their hard work on the project. It certainly would not be where it is in Nantwich without them.
The most up to date news is that the invitation letters were sent out from practices to patients in September and since then our pharmacists have been approached by many patients asking for more information and many are keen to participate. We are all looking forward to the full intervention phase.
Suzanne Austin
5th November 2002
