In a period of over four years, I've been situated in a wide range of community pharmacies right across Scotland. I've worked in the main four cities – Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Dundee. I've also worked across Fife, Perthshire, Kinross-shire, Stirlingshire, Inverclyde, Angus and Dumfries. I even spent around seven months on an island called Bute, which is nearly 30 miles west of Glasgow.

I've worked in pharmacies based in city centres, the suburbs, towns, and rural areas – as well as pharmacies joined-up with GP surgeries. I've even worked in places that attract tourists, such as parts of Perthshire.

The difference between rural and urban pharmacies

Rural areas represented some of my favourite places to work, because they provide a slightly different challenge for me from more urbanised settings – you get to deal with a range of healthcare enquiries and help different kinds of people.

Enquiries from patients who are visiting the country or visiting from other parts of Scotland are to be expected, especially in places like Auchterarder, Dunkeld and Pitlochry, for instance.

In more urbanised settings, I've come across and dealt with more regular enquiries and found my role to involve more of a routine. This is mainly because either the same patients often visit the pharmacy on a daily basis for the same or similar reasons, or because there are particular needs or enquiries in certain areas that get regularly addressed.

But in all settings, I tend to find there is often a rapport between the patients and the pharmacy team. This is crucial in order to create a positive healthcare environment for patients to get the best advice and for staff to deliver quality pharmacy services.

Scotland's community pharmacy contract

The pharmacy setting might vary from time to time, but the job has common traits. That's predominantly because Scotland has a community pharmacy contract that has universal coverage of a range of health services right across the nation. This has been the case for over a decade.

One of my frustrations with working nationwide over the years has been the number of patient group directions (PGDs) for each of the country's 14 health boards. For every one, I have had to sign a separate document for each PGD for each specific service.

Why can't NHS Scotland have PGDs that cover the whole country? Wouldn't that make life easier for pharmacists, especially those of us who have to travel and work in different pharmacies which may fall in different health board areas? I also think that would cut down on the bureaucracy and time spent on having to deal with the paperwork.

Anas Hassan qualified as a pharmacist in 2012. He has worked in various locations across Scotland during his career as a community pharmacist, and is currently based in Fife.