The fervent pharmacist

Worldwide the pharmaceutical industry’s moving to a more integrative medicine business model. It’s a model Christchurch pharmacist Mark Webster has been pioneering since 2001. Now his passion and hard work has been recognised by his peers.

Most people go to their local pharmacy with a doctor’s prescription and the expectation that the prescribed medication will immediately ease any pain, sickness or discomfort.

At Mark Webster’s Stay Well Pharmacy in Christchurch customers are also given the opportunity to have a one-on-one appointment with Mark, and experience a second level of care, including being advised on diet, exercise and lifestyle – the objective being to live a healthy lifestyle and have less trips to the doctor.

The 49-year-old is one of just a handful of naturopathic pharmacists in New Zealand. “But it doesn’t mean I’ve gone over to some dark side,” he laughs. “It’s simply that I have a foot in each paddock.”

The calibre of advice he’s dispensing at Stay Well Pharmacy is obviously high – it’s validated not only by the people who receive that wisdom, but also the recognition he received from the Australian judges at the recent Bioceuticals Integrative Medicine Awards in Melbourne.

He was named overall winner for Best in Practice for Integrative Pharmacy across Australasia.

There has been other recognition and awards too: A Kiwibank New Zealand Local Hero of the Year medalist 2017, Pharmacy Awards New Zealand 2017 Best Complementary Healthcare Campaign, Pharmacy Awards New Zealand 2016 Innovation in Delivery of  Care and Advice, and Pharmacy Awards New Zealand 2016 “Good Sort” Pharmacist of the year.

All these accolades indicate that Mark Webster is passionate about what he does and wants to make a difference.

To find the genesis of this passion it’s necessary to go back to when he was a seven-year-old growing up in Dunedin and given his very first chemistry set.

Some years later, at the Christchurch AMP Show, he won a microscope.

“I definitely had a passion for chemistry, science and exploration from an early age.”

Mark gave his mother a scare when, together with his brother, he built homemade rockets out of gunpowder they had sourced from firecrackers.

Karate was (and still is) Mark’s other passion in life. At 13, encouraged by his grandmother, he took up the sport to counter bullying at school.

“I [initially] wasn’t any good at it, but the bullying did stop.”

Graduating from Dunedin’s Pharmacy School in 1990, Mark completed his internship in Christchurch, then embarked on his OE to the UK in 1995 and worked in a number of positions, including a year at the pharmacy in Harrods which surprisingly had no computerised system at the time.

While in London he continued his karate classes three times a week and took many correspondence courses on nutrition and complementary therapies.

Returning to New Zealand after two years away, Mark noticed some interesting trends.

There were ‘get better’ pharmacies and ‘stay sick’ pharmacies and he contemplated where medicine was heading, and whether it was in the pharmaceutical industry’s interest to prevent disease.

He’d noticed the wording started to change from ‘curative’ to ‘management’ – so once you were diagnosed with a certain disease you were stuck on certain medicines.

People are always keen to get off whatever drugs they are taking, he explains, but many don’t understand that it requires creating a succession plan around such things as diet, lifestyle, nutrition and stress reduction.

A colleague encouraged Mark to undertake an Australasian College of Nutritional and Environmental Medicine (ACNEM) course in Melbourne in 2005. Upon his return he started a clinic at the back of his pharmacy (he’d established Stay Well Pharmacy in June 2001 after completing his internship).

A path less travelled

Mark says choosing the path of a naturopathic pharmacist has been “a journey” of training, rubbing shoulders with others within the industry including members of A4M (American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine), and meeting those small pockets of the medical fraternity who were “speaking the same language”.

There have been significant moves overseas towards the integrative medicine business model with the likes of US companies Walgreens, GNC, CVS Pharmacy and Rite Aid now offering clinics and consults in store.

In the UK the NHS has been running a health and wellbeing campaign recommending people make their pharmacy the first point of call to boost the immune system before they start feeling unwell. Ironically it’s called the ‘Stay Well Pharmacy’ campaign.

However, the integrated pharmaceutical industry is still in its infancy in New Zealand and lagging behind Australia. Mark says he knows of just eight medical practitioners in Canterbury practicing integrated medicine, and “five or six” pharmacists across the country working in a similar way..

Being an early adopter has been tough, he says, as there are so few people to cheer him on and work with him. There have also been those quick to discredit what he stands for.

He acknowledges that labelling yourself as an integrated naturopathic pharmacist means you’re walking a tightrope in the medical field.

“Poke your head up too high or make too much noise and you’ll experience massive push-back,” he explains.

Stocking nutritional products in a pharmacy comes with responsibility, and Mark thoroughly checks each product to see that it stacks up to any claims. “You have to be cleaner than clean and smarter than smart [in this industry].”

Mark believes there is now an increasing acceptance of good nutrition and appropriate supplements impacting on peoples’ health. He’s seen that impact played out in his own life – having been diagnosed with osteoporosis at age 39, but managing to delay his hip replacement by eight years through supplements (such as turmeric and fish oil) and his karate regime.

Mark prefers that people avoid the words ‘complementary’ and ‘alternative’ when describing Stay Well Pharmacy – and even the ‘wellness’ buzzword. As the name implies it’s all about ‘staying well’ and taking a 360-degree approach to peoples’ health.

So when a customer comes in with a script, as with every pharmacy, the first job Mark does when dispensing is ensure the medication and dose is appropriate.

“The second thing I do is look at the nutritional consequences of that treatment – for example, antibiotics may require the use of probiotics. For blood pressure medicines you’re looking at magnesium, aged garlic and Coenzyme Q10,” he says. “Every prescribed medicine has nutritional consequences.

“The third consideration is how can we maximise the effectiveness of this medicine? How can we [safely] reduce the strength and duration of the medicine as required? We’re talking lifestyle and behavioural factors here. For example, with anti-depressants, what nutritionals can boost the effect of the medication? Things like, fish oils and multi-B vitamins.”

When a deeper look is needed, clients have a consultation with Mark so he can take that 360-degree approach, factoring in natural light, yoga or meditation, sleep, hygiene, meal-time planning, and stress management. Even the time individuals stop looking at their PC or TV screen is important, he says.

“The picture of health is like a 37-piece jigsaw,” explains Mark. “Most people are only working with three of four pieces and they’re frustrated that they can’t see the picture they want. Doing this in a co-ordinated and pragmatic approach and letting people feel heard is key.”

Community-minded

When Mark takes off his white pharmacist’s coat he often swaps it for a white karate ‘dogi (robe). He has helped set-up two karate ‘dojo’ (training schools) in Christchurch as charitable trusts, and has another planned. Marks passion is taking children with behavioural problems or learning/self-confidence issues, and helping them find solutions to those difficulties through the discipline of martial arts.

It all ties in nicely – the first role is about considering what goes into your body, while the latter concerns self-discipline and controlling what you’re putting out.

Mark took up karate in 1982 and admits that he initially sucked at it, as he did in all sports.

“For me karate became an icon of persistence,” he says. “It you keep persisting you will eventually succeed. There are no short-cuts; it’s the only way to advance.”

Persist he did – taking a total of 32 years to achieve his ‘4th dan’ black belt.

Mark describes the results of his own personal karate journey as “a wonderful way to live” and takes great pleasure in seeing his charges develop and grow.

“You come to the dojo to learn to punch and kick. But after a while you leave the dojo having learnt how to walk in someone else’s shoes, how to respect ourselves and others in a safe and nurturing environment.”

Mark’s amazed at how students who’re considered ‘naturals’ at the karate discipline often don’t stick at it. It’s the ones who’re uncomfortable, uncoordinated, who struggle but keep coming week after week, that outlast the others.

He’s also grateful for how the discipline has helped him in his day-to-day pharmacy work – to “better understand where people are”.

Mark’s community credentials also include work for the Canterbury Community Pharmacy Group, Pharmacy Guild, Pharmaceutical Services Limited, and the Health and Disability Commissioner.

Grief and lessons

When the CTV building collapsed during the second Canterbury earthquake Mark instantly knew in his heart that he’d lost some close friends. His worst fears were realised; he had seven funerals to attend in seven days. He didn’t make it to all of them; he’d cried all he could cry.

He still sees the downstream effect of the quakes in the Cantabrians who come into his pharmacy – and in the physical ailments, such as auto-immune diseases.

“We think of stress in an event like this as a single event, but in reality it’s a snowball of activity.”

The stress of the quakes is enough to turn your hair grey; and in Mark’s case it did, within a few weeks – not helped by a couple of tragic family events a few years later.

“We completely under-estimate the effect of stress,” he says. “[Overall] people do a terrible job of managing and dealing with it – which is not good considering stress is at the core of our disease processes.”

When it comes to his business – while there is stress as a business owner, Mark sees passion as his major driving force. It’s also one of his lessons for other business owners.

“You must always maintain your passion if you want to maintain your progress,” he says. “People will buy your passion before they buy your product.”

If you spend more time complaining about what you do, than you do celebrating what you do, it’s time to change industries, he believes.

Mark is also convinced that many people don’t understand what’s required to succeed in business. From experience he knows that some lessons from the past no longer apply today. “We’re now living in a new genre. The message for businesses is to differentiate or die.”

That differentiation involves new technologies, such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and Big Data, and new thinking.

In the field of integrative medicine, such new thinking is applied to DNA and its association with genes.

“Integrated medicine recognises that you can turn genes off and on. So if you have a certain genetic condition you can actually alter that by different nutritional practices, and turn that genetic predisposition off.”

Business owners also work in silos and too few have mentors, believes Mark. He currently has three mentors covering karate, general business and franchising (he has developed a franchise model for Stay Well).

“It might be lonely at the top, but the view’s better. And having someone else to share that view and guide you makes all the difference.”

He has also mentored other pharmacists, which is one of the reasons why he won the Local Hero award in 2017.

“Mentoring helps you look at your business from the outside-in, he explains, “and not just see what your customers see, but also what your competitors and colleagues see – so you can take a more integrated approach to your business.”

Looking to the future

New Zealand’s pharmacies have definitely been impacted from competition such as supermarkets and discounters. But the challenge going forward, says Mark, is deciding where a pharmacy should position itself.

“There needs to be more niche marketing. The genres that I personally work in include dermatology, gut health, chronic fatigue and mental health.”

He advises pharmacies to be part of the emerging Internet of Things (IoT); to position themselves in order to maintain their branding and relevance.

“Don’t just think about being ‘bricks and mortar’ but more ‘clicks and mortar’.”

As for his own aspirations, Mark’s looking forward to continuing his educational development, expanding the Stay Well brand as well as his business and community networks – and sharing his knowledge with as many people as he can.

He’s wary of growing too big, too fast “because you can lose sense of what’s real and what’s necessary”.

While it would be nice to have Stay Well Pharmacies in other centres, he believes it’s important to get buy-in from the industry first – to network with others and team up together, so the pharmacy clinic and integrated approach to health and medicine becomes more widely accepted.

That may not happen overnight – but with Mark’s determination you get the sense that it may well happen in the not too distant future.

Written by Glenn Baker, editor of NZBusiness. This story was first published in the July 2018 issue of NZBusiness. 

Tips for young pharmacists

To help get established in your own pharmacy business, here are Mark Webster’s top 3 tips:

            1. Obtain as much information as you can, and from multiple sources.

            2. Remind yourself that science is fluid not static – what we know today is not what we knew yesterday and it isn’t what                    we’ll do tomorrow.

            3. Team up with good people – but ensure you learn as much about what you shouldn’t do or don’t want to do as about                    what you should do and do want to do. “I worked for around 35 pharmacies and some of them taught me things that                      made me think ‘no I’m never doing that [in my own pharmacy]’.”