Charity plans to tackle sector wide wellbeing issues

An independent charity dedicated to supporting community pharmacy teams and their wellbeing, launches a series of campaigns to tackle stress.

Pharmacist Support will be focusing on wellbeing focused activities in the next few weeks with the launch of its now annual Student ACTNow Campaign. This April also marks the 20th anniversary of Stress Awareness Month.

Last year, the charity launched a new counselling service, which in its first 12 months has helped 73 individuals, some of whom had complex traumas. This year, following a recruitment drive Pharmacist Support is also expanding its peer support network of Listening Friends, providing more capacity to support people within the profession struggling with work and study-based worries.

Following the segmentation of its ACTNow campaign last year, targeting the wellbeing needs of each grouping in their pharmacy family (students, trainees and pharmacists), the charity will again run three targeted wellbeing campaigns in 2022.

• The first will focus on the issues experienced by pharmacy students, and centers around exam anxiety, social anxiety and bullying. This campaign will run from Wednesday 30th March – Wednesday 6th April.
• The second will be the charity’s Trainee ACTNow campaign that will focus on getting mentally prepared for the assessment and the transition to responsible pharmacist. This will run from Wednesday 25th May – 1st June.
• The final installment will be a pharmacist focused campaign that will kick off once again on World Pharmacists Day (25th September) and run for four weeks, ending on 22nd October.

Danielle Hunt, Pharmacist Support Chief Executive (pictured right) said: “In order to tackle some of the issues highlighted through our research around workplace culture and stigma, we feel it is important to look beyond what individuals can do, and towards what we can all do to create positive environments to allow people to thrive. In 2021 many across the sector took the first step and signed up to the RPS’s Wellbeing and Inclusion Pledge. Through this campaign, we want to further support organisations to deliver on this commitment and embed wellbeing practices into the workplace and place of study by providing practical support.

She added: “Our aspiration is to create a tidal wave of change to reverse the trends of high levels of burnout within the profession. We believe this will only be realised through collaborative working and commitment. We therefore would like to work collaboratively with as many organisations – universities, employers, managers and membership bodies - across the sector as possible.”

For further information and to sign up to the charity’s ACTNow campaign, visit https://pharmacistsupport.org/support-our-work/our-wellbeing-campaigns/