Assistant Review

I had the pleasure of working for a while at the pharmacy, I had lots of tasks while there however I was mainly on stock rotation and making sure to put only the newest medicine and other health related goods out on the shelves for the customers to buy over the counter. I also got to work behind the prescription till and give the customers the right medicine needed for their prescriptions. It was a very good experience and one I hope to do again In the near future.

I developed and learnt lots of new skills while I was there. I developed my punctuality skills as I had to arrive at the pharmacy on time and also do certain tasks in a time limit. I also got to work as a team on some team projects with the other work experience students and also the staff that worked there. I was the leader of my group for the time I was there so this helped me to learn some skills for managing groups of people. Furthermore I also learnt about several medicine and how they’r manufactured by talking to the pharmacist in the pharmacy. It was great.

I really enjoyed the programme, I’m interested in going on to study chemistry at university next year so getting to do a work experience that was related was really enjoyable and helped me to understand that I definitely want to do Chemsitry. Also the staff were very friendly and assisted me in every way possible so this added to the enjoyment of working at the pharmacy. I especially like learning about how the different medicine were manufactured and working behind the till for the prescriptions.

I felt very valued by the kind staff there, they helped me and also helped me develop and learn a huge amount on new skills. It felt like we got very close in the time we were there. They also gave me several tips for applying to university as several had already finished university themselves and they also gave me advice as to which university to apply to. I reallt felt that they valued me quite a lot.

The programme was well structured, it gave me an insight into the different areas of working in a pharmacy as I got to do lots of different things there. They always varied the tasks so that I wouldn’t get bored of doing the same thing for the time I was there and they set out the whole structure to us on our first day.

I received lots of support from the staff, they were always willing to help me get out of tough situations e.g when a customer would ask where a particular item was and I didn’t know as I was new they’d help me by telling them where it was. They also helped me to learn how to use he various programmes I needed to use and the several devices to log the new stock into the system.

I received lots of support from my employer aswell, they were mainly in charge of doing the paperwork for the pharmacy so I didn’t see them too often in the shop floor but if I needed any help and there was no one around they’d be willing to help me as best as they could. They were the one who gave me my reference aswell so this was very kind of them as this will support my application for university when I apply in a couple of months.

I didn’t get paid for this work experience as you generally tend not to because you go to the work experience to learn new skills and acquire a good reference for your future applications. I’m great full for the vast amounts of new skills I learnt as they are better then any money they could have given me. They gave me some money for lunch and also for the vending machine however so that was cool.

There weren’t many opportunities outside of work as it was a small pharmacy compared to other larger ones but this was fine as we had plenty of opportunities inside of work to learn more about the chemistry. The pharmacists would often answer any questions we had so that we could learn a lot more about what it’s like to do Chemistry as a job. It was great. I do wish we’d have had opportunities outside of work however.

Yes

It was great fun if you are thinking about studying something like pharmacy or chemistry in the near future. You’ll learn loads of new skills that you can apply to other areas of your life aswell as talk about them to your university interviewers. You’ll also meet new people who are very experienced and will be heppy to answer any questions you have. So if you get to do this experience go for it, you won’t regret it.

I’d say to make sure that if you have any questions for the pharmacists then ask as they’ll be more than happy to answer them and are very nice people. Also If you panic in a certain situation either when taking to a customer or doing any other task then stop and ask a member for staff for help as they won’t be annoyed and will do their best to help you.