OTC Expert 2019 Pain Relief Training for pharmacy support staff

MediaPharm’s OTC Expert 2019 Pain Relief Pharmacy Training

MediaPharm’s OTC Expert 2019 Pain Relief Pharmacy Training course is designed to get all your pharmacy staff up to speed with valuable pain relief advice. This quick course takes only 20 minutes using our training platform.

Access the OTC Expert 2019 Pain Relief Training

Why Pain Relief training?

Consumers spend around 566.5 million pounds on OTC pain relief medicines in the UK. Training your team to recommend the right pain reliever for each customer’s needs will help you give a person-centred service and increase sales.

Nearly 10 million people in the UK suffer pain every day according to the British Pain Society (BPS) and this affects people going to work, school or going about their daily lives. Some of the pain is chronic and needs to be managed by the GP with a combination of medicines, physiotherapy and sometimes counselling. However, mild to moderate short term pain can be managed through self-care with the help of the pharmacy and signposting to local healthcare professionals and charities.

Pain is one of the most common reasons why customers come into the pharmacy. It’s why the pharmacy shelves are bulging with pain relief products and this can make it confusing to know which to choose.

With pain, be sensitive to the fact that if the customer is in pain they may not be as receptive to a prolonged conversation at that point. Make a judgement and perhaps ask them to come back to tell you how they got on and so you can give them more self-care advice for the future.

You may not know it but, pain is actually a good thing: a warning system put in place by the body to protect us from further injury. Pain is not a condition but a symptom.

The sensation of pain is the result of complex messages passing along nerves between the site of injury, the spinal cord and the brain. Prostaglandins are chemicals released by body tissues when they are damaged, causing swelling, redness and inflammation.

Pain can be mild, moderate or severe, and can also be classified as acute (lasting for a short time e.g. a sprained ankle) or chronic (long-term pain, usually lasting 12 weeks or more e.g. arthritis). People may also describe pain in different ways e.g. throbbing, dull, stabbing or aching.