Kylie Godden

Pharmacy Technician

My name is Kylie Godden and I work as a Pharmacy Technician. I work four days a week within the local PCN, and I work one day a week with the Medicines Management team. I’ve only been in the role for 15 months, so I’m still doing quite a lot of training, but I can already see how I can marry up the work that I do in the community hospitals with my local PCN. I work alongside the Community Hospital and my local PCN. Therefore, a lot of patients in the hospital also use my PCN, so I can go in whilst they’re in hospital and say ‘Hi, I’m Kylie’.

The nature of my job means that I come across patients in hospital and become that familiar face. This also means that when they then go home and because I cover the surgeries that they that they’re based in, they’ve then got a contact who can help them with any questions and queries that could save a GP appointment.

This familiarity with the patient helps with the patient’s care and then creates a less admissions and strain on the NHS because of the role that I’m doing. The press is going on about there’s not enough GP appointments and I guess people could be tempted to sit at home and say oh, ‘I shan’t bother the GP. It’s not important. It’s only about my tablets.’ whereas if they know somebody like me, they can call me and I can deal with it. Patients have got somewhere else that they can call rather than just rely on the GP because patients don’t know what roles are available in pharmacy or in the surgery. They just think GP.

My background was community pharmacy. As well as working in a pharmacy, I used to deal with care homes. I used to run the room that managed the medications for care homes. However, you are very much at the end of the process, as in the fact that the prescription’s been issued.

This role is so varied, you just have no idea what you’re going to be tackling. I mean, for instance, within the first two weeks of being with Dorset Healthcare, I had to translate a leaflet from Croatian to English to find out if there was anything in this product that a patient could be potentially allergic to because they bought this product in Croatia. It was something I would never do in in a community pharmacy setting.

There are pull factors as to why I’ve stayed in the county of Dorset for my career. It’s local to me I only live 8 miles from work. The training that is required to do are all local as well. Most of the training is done online through teams, zoom and if I must go for in person training, it’s usually in Poole so it’s not a million miles away and I’m used to travelling about for my role.

There is everything that I need for my role in Dorset. It is such a lovely place to live, and I am lucky to live and work in such a pretty part of the country. If I was offered a job elsewhere in the county such as Somerset, I would not go because I enjoy the role that I am in, my colleagues are so nice and welcoming as well as living somewhere so pretty and unique, I just love it.