The PJ Pod

Disagreement and conflict are unavoidable realities common to all working environments, but for pharmacists and pharmacy teams faced with potentially long hours, stretched resources, increasing complexity and high expectations, it does not take much for problems to escalate. This can put patient safety at risk and contributes to stress and burnout.

In this learning episode of The PJ Pod, we explore some of the common underlying causes of conflict in the pharmacy workplace and consider how individuals, whether managers or not, can take practical steps to avoid or resolve conflict situations.

By the end of the episode, you will be able to:

- Understand how pharmacy working conditions and external factors can make conflict within teams more likely;

- Spot early warning signs of conflict in the workplace;

- Use simple strategies to address conflict early and avoid problems growing;

- Understand the importance of a safe, welcoming work environment and what you can do to promote one.

Many thanks to Harpreet Chana, pharmacist and founder of the Mental Wealth Academy, and Melissa Cochrane, well-being director at Pharmacist Support, for their expert contributions.

This programme is presented by Katherine Sole, editor, research and learning, and was produced by Geoff Marsh.

Despite national incentives and locally commissioned services designed to improve availability of palliative care medicines from community pharmacies, access is not evenly distributed across the country.

This problem is only set to get worse with demand for these services expected to increase in the coming decades. Marie Curie has estimated that, if the proportion of people requiring palliative care remains the same, the number of people with palliative care needs in the UK would increase by more than 147,000 between 2023 and 2048 — a rise of 25%.

In this episode of The PJ Pod, executive editor Carolyn Wickware and senior features editor Dawn Connelly discuss what the NHS is doing at local and national levels to ensure patients can maintain their quality of life for as long as possible.

As has become tradition, The PJ Pod’s final episode of the year looks back over some of the most significant stories in pharmacy in the past 12 months, before members of The PJ editorial team make their predictions for 2025.

Big stories of 2024 have included the launch of Pharmacy First in England, a persistent ethnicity pay gap in the profession, the emerging threat of nitazines, slumping vaccination rates and new legislation allow pharmacy technicians to take on a wider role.

Please do let us know what you think we have missed in this episode on social media, using the hashtag #PJPod or email us at: [email protected].

This episode is presented by Carolyn Wickware, executive editor, and produced by Geoff Marsh.

Thank you to Dawn Connelly, senior features editor; David Lipanovic, senior clinical reporter; Sophie Willis, investigations editor; Corrinne Burns, RPS correspondent; and Caitlin Killen, clinical editor, for their contributions.

In September 2024, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) put forward proposals to take on royal college status, pending a vote of the membership in early 2025.

The RPS said the proposals were in response to strategic ambitions amid rapid changes in the pharmacy profession, and followed an independent, 18-month-long review of its constitution and governance, led by consultancy firm Firetail.

To share more information with members about why the changes are being proposed and how a Royal College of Pharmacy might operate, the Society's executive team — comprising president Claire Anderson, chief executive Paul Bennett, deputy chief executive Karen Baxter and head of strategic communications Liz North — toured Great Britain to speak with members directly.

The Pharmaceutical Journal attended two of these ‘roadshow’ events to hear from pharmacists and pharmacy students about their opinions on the proposals and to find out what questions they were asking RPS leaders.

More information about the proposals can be found on the RPS website or in The Pharmaceutical Journal’s interview with Bennett, published in September 2024.

If you have any questions that have not yet been answered, you can email them to [email protected].

This episode was produced by Geoff Marsh and presented by RPS correspondent Corrinne Burns with support from executive editor Carolyn Wickware.

High levels of patient safety incidents related to time-critical medicines (TCMs) — medicines that need to be given or taken at a specific time — have persisted for decades. In 2022/2023 alone, there were 17 deaths recorded as a result of medicine dose delivery being delayed or omitted entirely.

Solutions, such as using e-prescribing systems, has been successful on a local level but scaling them up nationally to accommodate a variety of platforms is a challenging task.

However, a new national focus from NHS England on reducing the number of these events, may finally deliver a solution.

In this episode of The PJ Pod, executive editor Carolyn Wickware and senior clinical reporter David Lipanovic take a closer look at how TCMs can be administered more safely.

Lipanovic’s full feature on this topic can be found here: https://pharmaceutical-journal.com/article/feature/every-minute-counts-taking-a-national-approach-to-time-critical-medicines

Green social prescribing, which can include activities such as community gardening, mindful walks and conservation volunteering — as well as 'blue' activities like kayaking and wild swimming — is gaining traction.

Results from a government-backed green social prescribing programme were published in September 2024, showing that it had a positive impact on measures of wellbeing and was able to reach a broader range of people than many other social prescribing initiatives.

However, there are challenges to implementing green social prescribing, including commissioning arrangements, funding, and data collection and sharing.

In this episode of The PJ Pod, Dawn Connelly, senior features editor, visits a charity that helps people to connect with nature in order to improve their mental wellbeing, hears about the latest evidence from researchers evaluating these nature-based interventions and talks to a mental health pharmacist who is working with social prescribing link workers to connect patients with nature.

With thanks to Georgina Gould, clinical lead at Dose of Nature; Ruth Garside, professor of evidence synthesis at the University of Exeter; Julze Alejandre, a health promotion and policy specialist at the University of Edinburgh; and Dimple Khatiri, a mental health pharmacist and personalised care lead at a primary care network in Hertfordshire.

A special thank you to Dose of Nature service-user Steve for sharing his story with us.

This episode was produced by Geoff Marsh, with editorial support from executive editor Carolyn Wickware.

Over the last decade, the development of targeted therapies has significantly changed the way that chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL) is treated. Survival and life expectancy has improved, and this patient cohort is living and receiving treatment for longer than ever before. These changes have meant that the involvement of pharmacists across all sectors in the treatment of CLL patients has also evolved significantly.

In this episode of The PJ Pod, Caitlin Killen, assistant clinical editor, speaks to a patient who has been living with CLL for 17 years, as well as with two pharmacists involved in the care of CLL patients, to understand how pharmacists can best support patients with CLL.

Many thanks to expert patient Anthea Holland; Catherine Parbutt, consultant pharmacist for cancer services, The Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust; and Tejal Gorasia, principal cancer pharmacist, Milton Keynes University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, for their expertise.

This episode was produced by Geoff Marsh.

In this learning episode, we look at the latest developments in migraine treatment where new classes of drugs are starting to provide additional options for patients and prescribers.

For links to relevant articles and further resources on migraine treatment visit the PJ website.

Many thanks to Kerri Spalding, a migraine patient, advocate and fundraiser, and Mathew Garrod, lead pharmacist for neurosciences and specialist pharmacist at University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust, for their expertise and insights.

This programme is presented by Alex Clabburn, senior editor — research and learning and was produced by Geoff Marsh.

Drones are already being used to transport medicines in several countries around the world, including the United States, Australia, Switzerland and Rwanda, but what’s the story in the UK, where the road infrastructure is good and the airspace is small and busy? Is there a need for medical drone deliveries? Are they safe and would they be a viable option for the NHS?

These are questions that senior features editor Dawn Connelly investigates in this episode of The PJ Pod. We hear from the experts behind several projects across the UK as they test the feasibility of using drones to deliver NHS medicines.

Thank you to Paul Royall, senior lecturer in pharmaceutics at King’s College London; Arthur Mendez, a research and development engineer with drone development company HeroTech8; Mark Knowles, head of production at Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust; Christopher Law, co-founder of healthcare drone logistics start-up Apian; Jamie Hogg, clinical lead for the CAELUS project for the north of Scotland; and Anthony McDavitt, director of pharmacy for NHS Shetland.

This episode was produced by Geoff Marsh, with editorial support from executive editor Carolyn Wickware.

In this episode of The PJ Pod, we look at how pharmacists can become more involved in research, by hearing directly from those who have done just that. We speak to the members of our OPERA 2024 shortlist, and winner, as well as Parastou Donyai, chief scientist at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, to explore some of the practical steps that individuals can take when starting out, while also considering the skills and characteristics that can help pharmacists thrive as researchers.

Many thanks to the OPERA 2024 shortlist: Zoe Edwards, Ryan McNally, Anneka Mitchell, Anna Robinson-Barella and Sion Scott, and to Parastou Donyai, for their contributions.

This programme is presented by Caitlin Killen, assistant clinical editor, research and learning, and produced by Geoff Marsh.