Will Farmer, Numark's preregistration student of the year
Will Farmer, from Quay Pharmacy, Brixham, Devon, is the winner of the award and £500 prize money, sponsored by Reckitt Benckiser.
As part of the preregistration programme, trainees were asked to run a health promotion event based on topics they covered throughout a series of workshops. Trainees were judged on the quality of the health promotion event that was staged, along with feedback from tutors and workshop facilitators on their performance throughout the year.
Mr Farmer’s “Bits and bobs” campaign was about raising awareness of self-examination for testicular and breast cancer among young men and women aged 18 to 30 years.
Yvonne Tuckey, learning and development manager at Numark, said: “It has been great to see the quality of the health promotion events that [trainees] completed. [Mr Farmer] clearly thought about his campaign in a wide context, using internet links on Facebook and YouTube, involving healthcare professionals and other local pharmacists and even speaking on local radio. He focused on not only educating patients, but trying to drive a change in behaviour as well.”
Mr Farmer said: “The Numark programme has helped me understand the implications of owning your own pharmacy, something you certainly don’t learn at university. The course was really comprehensive and, having training sessions once a month and working in a pharmacy rather than on placement was much better than other courses I know of.”
Three other trainees were highly commended at the gala dinner. They were Resham Chada, from Carters Chemists, Northwood, Middlesex, and Haider Al-Saffar and Fatemah Ghari (joint project), from Thackers Pharmacy, Manchester.
