Pharmacy at the Festivals

Festival Medical Services runs a pharmacy at Glastonbury and Reading Festivals as part of their field hospital. You might think, why would anyone want to work in a pharmacy at a music festival?

The answer is in multiple parts.

Firstly, it is a fantastic challenge operating a round the clock service in a temporary pharmacy for up to five days. It is like nothing you will experience in any day job. The pharmacies are registered as retail pharmacies but have a hospital like element to them as they are adjacent to the hospital tent. For those working in retail pharmacy, it is a breath of fresh air working in a multi-disciplinary environment where your professional expertise is called upon by the other disciplines working alongside you. Any queries can be dealt with almost instantly as the person you might need to talk to is there. For those who work in hospital pharmacy, the face to face patient contact where you have to respond to patient symptoms to recommend an OTC product can be a challenge, as well as revisiting different aspects of the law that community is covered by. You constantly have to think on your feet as you might not have a full inventory of medicines available to you and deliveries into the site are difficult. So being able to use your product knowledge to advise the medical team and the patients is vital and helps you to remember products you had long forgotten.

Secondly, you get a free ticket in return for two eight hour shifts, with secure camping and good quality, subsidised meals. Thirdly, you will gain key experiences that will look good on any CV and make excellent examples during any competency based interview. The team is fantastic, so even if you turn up for the first time on your own, you will be looked after and make long lasting frienships.

But finally, and most importantly, you will be doing all of the above with a quiet satisfaction that you will be helping out very good causes. FMS donated £60,000 to various charities in 2009, more details of which can be found on this website.

So who do we need? Well, for obvious reasons, we need everyone to have pharmacy related qualifications and experience.

Primarily we need registered pharmacists as well as dispensing technicians with a minimum of NVQ2 in dispensing. We do also need a small number of people for setting up the pharmacy at the start of the festival as well as packing away at the end. There is no qualification needed for this of course, other than being good with a screwdriver.

So if you fancy joining the pool of volunteers to have the experience of a lifetime, please apply to join FMS on this website. I look forward to receiving your application.

Contact; pharmacists@festival-medical.com