O’Malley’s Life Pharmacy - Over 50 years of serving the community in Dooradoyle

In every community, there are a few places that everyone knows about and where everyone feels welcome, and O’Malley’s Life Pharmacy is one of them. Situated across from the Walk-In GP Clinic and near University Hospital Limerick, the pharmacy has been in the same spot for over 50 years, attending to the needs of the local community of Dooradoyle and environs. 

Norma Maher, Retail Manager, says: "We love to see our regular customers coming in to us. Often, we’ll be looking after the third generation of the same family – parents, children and grandchildren – and it’s great to be able to provide that continuity of service and knowledge across the years. The older generation might be coming in for their regular prescription, their children availing of our great Wellbeing section to help them to stay healthy to look after their young families, or maybe getting a bit of advice from our pharmacist, Eva, when one of their little ones is under the weather. Whatever the situation, we’re here to help.

"I suppose, being here so long, we’ve seen lots of change. When I came to work here first, there was an older population around us, but now we see lots of young parents with small kiddies and we adapt to that change.  Our Baby section is a lot bigger than it was only a few years ago!

"We’re so lucky to have a team with great clinical knowledge and experience,’ Norma continues. ‘With Covid and huge pressure elsewhere in the healthcare system, people have come to rely on pharmacies like ours as the easiest and quickest way to access clinical advice. We also provide day to day health services like blood pressure monitoring, smoking cessation, BMI monitoring, asthma management and vaccinations. All these services we administer in our separate consulting room, and it’s great to have somewhere private to go if you need to talk to the pharmacist and you don’t want to share your symptoms with the rest of the shop! Just pop in or give us a call to make an appointment for a specific service, like the flu vaccine which is available at the moment, and we’ll look after you. 

"It’s important when you are giving people advice about something as important as their health that you are properly trained. We work very hard to keep all our team trained and up to date on the latest treatments and trends. Because our pharmacy is right beside the hospital, we are often working with patients who are that little bit sicker, maybe they’re in to get their discharge prescriptions or the like. So our staff are very experienced in supporting people when they are going through a particularly rough time health wise.  Committing to constant training gives our staff the knowledge and confidence to advise our patients and customers, and they, in turn, know they are safe to rely on our advice.

"Because we know our patients well, we know what other medications they might be on, whether maybe there’s a history of, say, blood pressure or kidney problems in the family that might make one medicine riskier than another. All of this knowledge we use to keep our patients and customers as safe and well as we can.

Norma adds: "Eleven years ago, we joined the Life symbol group and that’s been great for us. It means we can offer a loyalty programme that works not only in our pharmacy but any Life pharmacy.  Our customers have access to an Online Doctor, as well as online shopping from our website www.lifepharmacy.ie. Our customers can order from a wide range of products, even lines that we don’t carry day to day on the shop floor, and we can have it in store for them to pick up within a day or two. Likewise with e-prescriptions, customers can get their GP to email us the script and we can have their medicines ready for them within about 30 minutes.

"This time of the year, we’re heading into cold & flu season and there are plenty of people in to get their flu jab. This is also the time of year when we start preparing for Christmas, even though it’s still a couple of months away. From now on, we start getting in our Christmas gift ranges, skincare sets, beauty sets, perfumes and all the nice treats for under the tree!  Conscious of the cost-of-living pressures, we have something for every budget and we’ll be getting in additional stock as we get closer to the big day. So come in and say hello if you’re around Dooradoyle, we’d love to see you!"

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