Mental Health pressures in the pharmacy

Pressure is a fact of life for many people and community pharmacy working is no exception. It can come in many forms, from tight deadlines and demanding workloads to unrealistic expectations and a cutthroat competitive environment.

In some cases, pressure can be a good thing. It can help people to stay motivated and focused, and it can push them to achieve their goals. For example, a tight deadline can help to ensure that a project e.g., number of prescriptions dispensed is completed on time, and a demanding workload can help to develop new skills and abilities. However, too much pressure can be harmful. When people are under too much pressure they will feel constantly stressed and overwhelmed. In turn this leads to burnout and even mental health problems.

With an ever-increasing workload and pressures on pharmacy with limited resources, time and staffing, life in a community pharmacy can be very rewarding but it can be extremely stressful to. Work pressures have been at an all-time high in community pharmacy amidst the pandemic, we’re easily accessible to patients and aim to reduce the burden on GPs.

Employers have a legal ‘duty of care’ that employees are not made ill or injured by work. This includes minimising the risk of stress-related illness or injury to employees. Much of the law regarding health and safety in the workplace can be found in the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974.. Under the Health and Safety at Work Act, employers must have a written policy on health and safety at work that addresses the issue of stress in the workplace, which must be provided to all employees. Furthermore, the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999  places an obligation on the employer to actively carry out a risk assessment of the workplace, including stress-related risks, and act accordingly. Community pharmacy is no exception to this. Other employer responsibilities under this duty of care includes taking measures to alleviate monotonous tasks, adapting work to the individual, and tackling the causes of work-related stress.

We have a focus on provision of NHS and private services on top of our many other duties. Many of these are community pharmacy led services e.g., lifestyle monitoring and influenza vaccination which cannot be delegated to other members of the multidisciplinary team. For example, the Hypertension case-finding service only allows pharmacists to undertake blood pressure readings under the scope of the service and not utilise other members of the pharmacy team. This puts pressure on both the pharmacist to take on the extra roles and other team members to take on more responsibility to assist the pharmacist in their daily activities.  Managing and balancing other work with the provision of these services, whilst also being immediately accessible to patients, can be challenging.

Meeting such high pressures and demands safely while feeling unsupported can cause stress and affect mental health and well-being. There are many factors that can cause stress in the workplace. We all have different thresholds and coping capacities. Ideally, we need to manage feelings of stress before it leads to burnout or snowballs into other mental health issues.

In early 2022 the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Team (PSNC) completed a Pharmacy pressure survey.   

PSNC’s Pharmacy Pressures Survey has confirmed that the unsustainable pressures on community pharmacies are having a serious impact on pharmacy teams’ wellbeing, affecting patient services negatively, and putting businesses at risk.

The survey of over 5,000 pharmacy premises and 1,000 pharmacy team members asking community pharmacy contractors and, separately, pharmacy staff, about the effects that the current pressures are having on them and their colleagues.

The results indicate that 91% of pharmacies are experiencing staff shortages and almost half of contractors are extremely concerned about their pharmacy’s finances, with 80% reporting that the costs to run their pharmacies are significantly higher than this time last year. At the same time, nine out of ten pharmacy teams have seen a significant increase in phone calls from patients about prescriptions, and 86% reported a rise in requests for healthcare advice.

With pharmacies under this level of workload pressure, PSNC also heard about the impact on the mental health and wellbeing of pharmacy staff.

The survey found that:

• 98% of respondents said that workforce shortages are resulting in increased pressure on pharmacy teams.
• 82% said that increased workplace pressures are negatively affecting their mental health and wellbeing; and
• On a scale of 1 – 10, where 1 is not coping at all and 10 is coping perfectly fine, 79% of respondents scored their team as 5 or below.

As a consequence, two-thirds of pharmacies have had to cut back on services or the advice they offer to patients, and 29% have had to reduce their opening hours. These are last resort measures that are limiting pharmacy staff’s ability to spend the time with patients that they want to and making them uncertain of their capacity to take on new services in the future.

In the survey:

• 90% of pharmacies reported that they are unable to spend as much time with their patients.
• 87% said prescriptions now take longer to dispense; and
• Only 34% of respondents said that they felt that they had some capacity to take on new services in future.

Compounding the above, 83% of pharmacies reported a significant increase in medicine supply issues in the past year, leading to extra work and additional stress for staff. Two-thirds of respondents said that medicines supply chain issues are a daily occurrence, with 97% reporting that this led to frustration from patients.