Well....what a week. Firstly, we are all safe and sound. None of the team or our families were injured. Our homes are in quite a range of conditions, but we are all ok, and that's the thing that matters most. The pharmacy sustained no structural damage that is evident thus far. We were lucky. Several neighboring buildings are red stickered. I managed to get access with a Fire Service escort 10 hours after the quake and grabbed 2 shopping bags of emergency meds to take the the hospital, which was the centre of the medical response efforts. I operated an emergency supply service til the patients ran out about sundown. I managed to find a Building Inspector and he went through the pharmacy at 9am the next morning and gave me the all clear to enter to attempt to reshelve everything...very very little stock stayed on a shelf throughout the whole pharmacy. Insurers then confirmed we could function as an emergency medication dispensing service providing we weren't "trading as a business". That was fine with us...patient's needs were the priority, not selling the usual items of pharmacy trade, although we ended up giving away a lot of otc items that we couldn't script. We hooked into the cleanup and had volunteers from the hospital who weren't short of helpers, and 4 lovely German tourists and within 3 hours you couldn't tell we had just experienced a 7.8 magnitude quake....although I don't know how we'll ever get the smell of citronella out of the carpets. We had to turn away a few people during the cleanup who were drug seeking the usual suspect drugs...the Police were called a few times. Disasters bring out the best in some and the worst in others.
Dispensing ran from 1pm til 4pm then 10am til 4pm for the rest of the week. Stock was ordered via CDC, no mean feat when almost all comms are down, and choppered in. Thanks to Mike Rhodes at CDC for making a difficult exercise much easier. CCPG coordinated a roster of relief pharmacists that began arriving Thursday afternoon after the weather allowed the choppers back in. By the end of the week we've dispensed well over 1000 emergency supplies of every medicine imaginable and relied entirely on our own clinical judgement. Leaving the doctors to do the doctoring and us to just supply meds as necessary to keep the pressure off the doctors was exactly the right approach and I commend the CDHB in realising this and giving us carte blanche to get on and do what was required. Thanks also to staff at CCPG for all their assistance, all the offers of help from far and wide, the pharmacists who are here and scheduled to come over the coming weeks and months. It's greatly appreciated when you have a professional role to play and yet you still have to be a father, husband and insurance expert for your personal situation too, especially with 4 separate insurance issues to deal with. ...this simply couldn't have been done without the help we've received. I feel humbled to be part of a profession that has shown this much level of care. When the chips are down, it's great to know that no one is isolated. Thanks you all, so very much.
Dave McKee and the team at Kaikoura Pharmacy.