W2 – Building a resilient pharmacy workforce and the importance of looking after ourselves – a necessity, not a luxury

Link to EAHP Statements
Section 1 – Introductory Statements and Governance: Statements – 1.5
Section 4 – Clinical Pharmacy: Statements – 4.8
Section 6 – Education and Research: Statement – 6.2, 6.4

Abstract
Great careers in pharmacy don’t just happen, they take planning and skill. How are things at work for you and your team? Concentration problems, insecurity and lack of initiative? Is your hospital workplace making you ill? Worldwide morbidity patterns highlight the high prevalence of mental health problems – the commonest being depression, anxiety and sleep disturbance.
Many people admit to stress at work. A recent workforce wellbeing survey in the UK found that 86% of pharmacists considered themselves to be at high risk of burn out.
Typical causes of work-related stress are an overload of work, bullying, lack of support, lack of leadership and a toxic working environment. This can include threats to professional status and personal standing, and can result in isolation and overwork. Becoming a casualty of a toxic workplace can undermine self-confidence, making people feel upset, threatened, humiliated or vulnerable. The result for all concerned can have a long lasting and devastating impact on individuals and their friends and families as well as on your pharmacy team.

Overview
This workshop will be a highly interactive, leadership and performance, workshop with a difference. It will use examples and experiences gathered from many facets of human life and make them relevant to your current and future career as a hospital pharmacist. Relevant, responsive and with a real-world approach, it will enable pharmacists to build teams that will thrive in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world.
The workshop will spotlight workplace behaviours commonly encountered in pharmacy teams and in your working day. It will challenge assumptions made by yourself and others, explore reactions to those situations and help you think about how you make decisions better. Using a solutions-based coaching approach, this workshop will ensure you are equipped with the skills for the future – creativity, adaptability, problem-solving and innovation. And are then able to take this back to your team to inspire them!

The workshop will explore:

• human performance and why we behave the way we do
• the impact of middle managers on people’s health, lives and wellbeing
• the power of coaching and key leadership strategies to support your teams’ mental health
• happiness traps and how to avoid them
• confidence and personal improvement
• how to improve clinical presence and impact for you and your team

Learning objectives
After the workshop, delegates will be:

• Able to practice with increased confidence, demonstrate increased clinical presence and improve their impact as a pharmacist and that of their team.
• More proficient at managing their energy and their time, as well as those they manage.
• Inspired to build a pharmacy team from the one they have, to the one they want.

Educational need addressed
A personalised “resilience prescription” capturing essential coping strategies to combat stress

• Improved confidence, resilience and wellbeing.
• A mindset focused on thriving at work and performing to their potential.

 Keywords
Pharmacokinetics, precision medicine approach, drug dosing.