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Mirette Elgawly
Bartell Drugs (Rite Aid)
526 228th Ave. NE
Sammamish, Wash. 98074
riteaid.com
SAMMAMISH, Wash. — When Mirette Elgawly’s Bartell Drugs pharmacy first received the COVID-19 vaccine, “We felt that our community needed us more than ever,” she recalls. “We took that to heart and made it our mission to protect our community.”
Now the pharmacy manager takes great pride in her store — part of Rite Aid — being one of the top vaccinating pharmacies in its region. Elgawly is also proud of the pharmacy’s travel clinics, which are designed to help customers stay healthy while away from home, giving them peace of mind to enjoy their travels.
“We believe that delivering on our commitments is critical to earning the trust of our community,” she says. “When you earn people’s trust, they come back to ask you about all their health issues and every new prescription and O-T-C medication they will take. It is a vigorous cycle, raising the bar of the patient-pharmacist relationship.”
The pharmacy digs deeply into patients’ records to update their missing vaccines. Beyond the business-as-usual routine, it also provides travel vaccines and regularly takes walk-ins. “We don’t stop there; we go to our people and actively provide off-site vaccination clinics,” adds Elgawly. Sammamish, she notes, had one of the highest COVID vaccination rates in the country during the pandemic.
As an immunization center with a clinical pharmacist on staff, the store is able to intensely focus on patients’ needs, supporting them with new medicine and nonprescription drug consultations, travel clinics and reminders about needed vaccines. Additionally, the technician immunization program is a tremendous value-adding initiative, which has trained “amazing immunizer technicians” to administrate vaccines, especially during the busy flu season.
Asked how customers regard the range of services, Elgawly says, “We are humbled every day by our patients’ feedback. They are always grateful and acknowledge the hard work that our pharmacy does to meet their needs in a timely manner.”
Among the most important of those services is raising patients’ awareness of their conditions and what to expect from their treatment, she adds. “Counseling, in simple words, works magic. We call patients to let them know about an interaction ahead of time, answer their questions over the phone, and recommend simple O-T-C medications. Through all of these opportunities, patient education is an integral component of our mission.”
The most rewarding part of her work is when a patient comes back to say, “You played a role is saving my son’s life,” or when she gets a thank you note explaining how grateful patients feel “to have such an amazing neighborhood pharmacy.”
She remembers patients’ deep appreciation for the store’s no-contact curbside delivery during the pandemic. In one incident, she caught a potential amoxicillin allergy for a patient with a dental prescription, and she called immediately to switch it to clindamycin, averting what could have been a serious allergic reaction. “The patient was amazed and grateful for our level of care and service.”
For her part, Elgawly says her store’s team of pharmacists, technicians and assistants “are all great mentors. I look up to them for inspiration on how to provide the best customer service and hustle with humility to immunize our community.”
As a student, her favorite subject of chemistry was “the first light” that inspired her to think about pharmacy school. “After trying different professions from sales to research, I found myself falling in love with community pharmacy. It is the perfect recipe of health care, business and people service. I started as a float pharmacist then a staff pharmacist and continued on my career path until I became a pharmacy manager.”
