Vincent Riera
Vincent Riera is a pharmacist and an owner of Pharmacie Gardonne, an Alphega pharmacy in Gardonne, France. He has 36 years of experience in his role and 31 years of running a pharmacy. Vincent strongly believes in developing the role of a pharmacist in France and has been integral to the success of the flu vaccination pilot launched in 2017.
“When I finished High School, I knew that I wanted to work in the healthcare industry. I liked the idea of being close to patients and helping them get better, which to me held a great job satisfaction potential, a sense of making a real difference. In fact, I did not make the grades to study medicine at the University, but that year learning about the medical profession for my A-levels gave me a good understanding of other opportunities in the sector, so I decided to pursue a career as a pharmacist.
My job as an owner pharmacist is very diverse, it includes a variety of daily tasks ranging from team management and stock control to developing strong, trusted relationships with my patients and customers, and I like that a lot.
The role of a pharmacist in France is often limited to mostly just dispensing medicines, and I think it’s very important that our patients and customers see us as fully competent health professionals, because we can offer professional expertise to help with advice and guidance as the first port of call in healthcare.
Therefore, when the Government decided to allow pharmacies in some regions of France to offer flu vaccinations to increase the uptake of this service, on a trial basis, I saw this as a great opportunity to develop the role of a pharmacist further.
I pro-actively promoted this opportunity to my colleagues in the region, and, together with the Alphega team, developed the training programme for pharmacies to enable them to start offering this service in their pharmacies. I also gave interviews in trade media and on the radio to emphasise the benefits of being able to offer flu vaccination in pharmacies. As a result, 80% of the community pharmacies in the four regions where the trial took place (and 90% of Alphega pharmacies) started offering this service and the take up increased from the expected 250,000 to 500,000 that year. After only two years of experimentation, all pharmacies nationwide were able to offer flu vaccination, which is a great success and made me very happy. However, I believe that this is just the beginning and pharmacies will soon be given even more opportunities to help their local communities by offering more services.
In my view, the principal importance of a community pharmacy lies in its proximity and easy everyday access for the local residents as the first port of call for the general health service and advice. This is why we need to continue persevering in developing our role in the healthcare sector further, for the benefit of our patients and customers.”