Paul Mayberry is no stranger to recognition and awards, one cursory glance at his LinkedIn page will tell you that. So when he stepped up to receive the PILLS award, a new category at the C+D awards ceremony three weeks ago, he’d be excused for accepting it as merely the latest accolade in his dazzling career showreel.
Upon walking off stage, however, his pride was immediately obvious.
“I feel so proud; really chuffed. To be acknowledged by your peers makes it even more special,” he told C+D on awards night.
Read more: ‘I treat every patient like I would treat my own family member’
Paul’s pharmacy journey started more than four decades ago, at a careers fair when he was 15. When asked what he wanted to do, he initially wasn’t sure.
“Well, what do you like?”, he was asked.
“Something in business?”, he replied.
“What’s your favourite subject?”
“Chemistry”
“Well, why don’t you combine chemistry and business and do pharmacy?”
“Yeah, sounds good”
And thus was born an illustrious career.
Read more: What a night!
Paul has always approached pharmacy entrepreneurially. When he took his pre-reg, he was given the option to work for Boots or Lloyds (then run by Alan Lloyd).
“While Boots would have been a fantastic job, it would have been fantastic training to work as a Boots pharmacist. I didn’t want to work as a Boots pharmacist,” he said. “I wanted to run my own pharmacy, so I worked for Lloyds because I was told that Alan was really efficient and drilled down in all the details.”
Read more: ‘I prize being liked’: A retiring pharmacist reflects on his career
From developing eCASS to optimise medicine purchasing, co-founding UK-wide buying group Cambrian Alliance, to his latest venture, Pharmacy X, a PMR designed to streamline pharmacy operations, there’s always been something in the sector that Paul has sensed could be improved.
“I love problem solving,” he says. “I love making things more efficient. When I see a problem, I don’t walk away from it. I embrace it and try to deal with it.”
Pharmacy X
His latest venture, Pharmacy X, which he began working on in 2020, emerged from a desire to make his pharmacies more efficient but being prevented from doing so due to outdated PMRs “which were developed 20 years ago by techies rather than people who worked in pharmacies”.
He simply says that “none of the PMRs around at that moment could do what I wanted it to do”.
Paul says Pharmacy X leaves “no stone left unturned” in optimising pharmacy workflows. One feature he is particularly proud of is the requirement for pharmacists to scan barcodes, which he claims “eliminates dispensing errors full stop”.
Read more: Behind the counter: Wellington Pharmacy, Somerset
The PMR has grown to such scale now, operating not only in all seven Mayberry pharmacies, but also across Wales and in England as well, that Paul now says that “90-95% of my [his] time is spent dealing with Pharmacy X”.
“I’m evangelical about Pharmacy X because I love what I’m doing and because I know that if pharmacists take it on it will make theirs and their staff’s life so much easier,” he says.
“Every time a pharmacist doesn’t sign up for it I take it as a personal failure. I honestly believe that if they don’t come to it they’ve made the wrong decision.”
Read more: ‘It’s not the government’s job to make pharmacy owners happy’
But Paul’s business brain doesn’t interfere with his community heart.
He recalls a story of a patient entering one of his pharmacy’s one day and asking the manager of Paul’s whereabouts. The patient was informed that Paul had since moved to be based in a different branch.
“Oh,” the patient said. “He was like a son to me.”
Read more: Big interview: Allied Pharmacies - ‘We were getting a little bored, now we have a project to fix’
Paul says that for him “he was one of hundreds, if not thousands of patients that I dealt with every month.
“I was much more important in his life than I could have imagined,” Paul says.
He is keen to promote kindness to all of his staff, telling them that their interactions with patients “aren’t the main interaction of their [a patient’s life]
“They could be having a hypo because they’re diabetic, their wife might have just received a terminal cancer diagnosis.”
Read more: Big interview: Well super Ifti Khan - ‘We are pure pharmacy’
His advice to staff if a patient is a “bit off” with them is to just “give them the best that you can”.
Paul, unsurprisingly, practices what he preaches.
“If someone comes in with a prescription to me, I will make sure that their problem is solved,” he says. “Even if I can’t get the stock myself, even if there’s an issue with it, I would try to sort it out myself so that those people would have the right result.”
Read more: Exclusive video interview: Janet Morrison: ‘If it’s a bad deal...’
We need to wrap up the conversation as Paul has somewhere to be. “I’m travelling up to the Midlands for a 40th reunion dinner for us all starting university together [BPharm in Pharmacy at Cardiff University],” he says.
It’s safe to say it’s been 40 years well spent.
