Fintan Moore looks at how we can help to make the pharmacy visit a little easier for autistic people
The autism charity AsIAm is campaigning on behalf of autistic people and their families to change how society thinks about autism, and to encourage the Government to introduce a National Autism
Strategy. Among their goals, the charity wants practical support to be in place to assist autistic people
to go to school, find employment and access healthcare. There is a growing awareness of autism, but there are still systemic barriers that autistic people face compared to those who are non-autistic, in many aspects of life. Even simple things like going to shops or public spaces can be daunting, so AsIAm are encouraging businesses and towns to become more autism-friendly.
It goes without saying that pharmacists should be proactive about helping in this campaign. In practical terms, the charity suggests that spaces can be made more accessible by having a ‘quiet time’ in the pharmacy during the week when background music is turned off; being assistance dog-friendly; providing a quiet space if feasible; and generally trying to be as accommodating as possible. It can be helpful to have ‘fidget tools’ available, which are simple sensory objects that can be handled by an autistic person to help prevent them from becoming over- stimulated and upset. A fidget box of these can be ordered from the Killaloe company www.thinking toys.ie, and the same company can also supply Ear Defenders to have on standby.
A percentage of autistic people are non- speaking, but can communicate in other ways
A percentage of autistic people are non-speaking, but can communicate in other ways. One option is the use of Communication Boards, which have pictures, words, numbers, symbols and letters that the person can point to in order to make themselves understood. I found one option on Amazon.ie which was designed for hospital/nursing home settings, but is reasonably good for a pharmacy, although there may be better ones available.
On this note, in terms of language around autism, the term ‘non- speaking’ is correct for someone who doesn’t communicate with speech, rather than ‘non-verbal’. It is also important to refer to someone as ‘being autistic’, and not ‘suffering from’ or ‘having’ autism, because it is part of the person’s identity and should not be described in the same way as a disorder or illness. It is right to speak neutrally about autism as a difference in their way of being, rather than a difficulty. As a profession, we are more than capable of being as open and welcoming as possible, and more information can be found on www.AsIAm.ie.
Bank Holiday blues
As professions go, pharmacy can have its ups and downs. Dealing with the public every day is generally fine, but not everybody out there is going to be your friend and a certain cohort of every pharmacy’s patients can very quickly wear out a pharmacist’s patience. For the most part, I’ve got nice people coming in to me who are appreciative of what we do to help them, so it’s all usually pleasant.
Nevertheless, a major drawback of retail pharmacy is the fact that it’s retail, which requires retailer hours and retailer days. I’m lucky enough not to open Sundays or late nights, but we do open from 9am to 7pm on Monday to Friday, and until 6pm on a Saturday. I close completely for lunch every day for an hour, which is great to allow us to eat in peace and relax for a bit, but it’s still a long day and a six-day week.
Sometimes I wonder if we could shorten the hours and close at 6 every day rather than 7, or make Saturday a half-day, but my fear about doing that isn’t that I might lose business, but instead that we’d get all the existing business crammed into fewer hours, so the pharmacy would be unpleasantly busy. We get a taste of that every time a bank holiday Monday comes around, when we are extra busy on the Saturday and then have the same again on the
Tuesday. This scenario also plays out at Christmas, when we close for either two or three days, depending on which day of the week Christmas Day is.
There are times when it gets so frenetic that I wish we didn’t bother closing the extra days at all and just ticked along nice and evenly same as usual. Maybe that’s the worst part of being a pharmacist — we don’t even get to relax without some blowback.
Sixth-place medal
It’s clearly not high enough to get a podium finish, but the good news recently was that the Irish healthcare system is now ranked 6th in the world, which is a jump from 80th place back in 2021. The improvement reflects a lot of investment over recent years, which seems to be bearing fruit, but there are obviously still issues and deficiencies.
One area mentioned as a weakness is the public-private inequality around access to services, and time spent on waiting lists, but where we score better than most countries is in the provision of pharmacy services. It’s probably worth mentioning that the equality of access for patients in pharmacy is probably the best that exists anywhere in the health service. Hopefully, the powers-that-be recognise that we’re a useful part of the system and aiding the improved ranking, rather than making us a target for savings to downgrade us to the international average.
Fintan Moore graduated as a pharmacist in 1990 from TCD and currently runs a pharmacy in Clondalkin. His email address is: greenparkpharmacy @gmail.com.
