Secret C Cards

Had a really embarrassing encounter with a young man this week who came into the pharmacy and presented me with a ‘C card’. I simply hadn’t come across this before and neither had any of the other staff in the shop.

So I asked him what he expected me to do now he had shown me the card and he said that he expected to be given free condoms adding ‘This is a chemist isn’t it!’.

It was at that point that the penny dropped (I have heard of these schemes before) and on looking at the card I could see that it was from a town some distance away from ours that, prior to 1st October, had been in a different PCT.

So I explained to him that we weren’t taking part in the scheme and advised him to try one of the pharmacies in the town from where he had picked up the card.

I was just really frustrated at the lack of communication about this scheme (e.g. Was I supposed to know about this? Was there sufficient information available to patients to explain which pharmacies were taking part?), and that this young man had been responsible enough to try to discretely use the scheme and had failed!

I just hope that our encounter didn’t put him off and that he does try to use scheme again. I have since clarified that the scheme is currently just running in the aforementioned town.