Showcasing wellbeing at the CPC

As announced earlier in the year, Pharmacist Support was chosen to be the Clinical Pharmacy Congress' nominated charity at their event in September. Being the first face to face conference in over two years, we were delighted to catch up with individuals and teams from across our pharmacy family. As well as delivering two sessions on the Science behind Wellbeing and Life After Covid: Why wellbeing needs to be central to our transition, the charity had a stand to showcase our support and recent ACTNow wellbeing campaign. Being at the exhibition allowed us to have in-depth conversations with individuals from different pharmacy backgrounds about their struggles and the type of support we can offer them.

Although aware of the impact these past 18 months have had on pharmacy teams, we were quite taken aback and saddened by the extent of the trauma and burnout we saw and heard about. We understand that the need for mental health support is particularly great across the pharmacy sector, especially for those experiencing past trauma. However, it was an opportunity for us to share details and information about our latest service development, counselling. This support forms part of our Counselling and Peer Support Service and through completing a simple online self-referral form, individuals who are suffering from anxiety, depression, a change in family circumstances that causes distress, bereavement, and other psychological issues are now able to access up to 12 counselling sessions. Since its launch earlier this year, over 186 counselling sessions have already been delivered. We are hopeful and confident that those we spoke to, and others reading this article who may need support too, will reach out to us and make use of the free and confidential counselling service.

We have also recently launched a Wellbeing Learning Platform. The platform is for individual wellbeing learning and training and is available to pharmacists, trainees and students. By signing up, members of our pharmacy family can access and follow a range of free online wellbeing workshops. More details of the counselling service and the Wellbeing Learning Platform can be found on our website.

Another focus of the partnership was to help the charity to raise vital funds. Whilst we have worked harder than ever to provide support to the pharmacy profession during the pandemic, most of our usual fundraising activities have not gone ahead. Like many charities across the world right now, we are having to find new ways to deliver our support to ensure that the people who need us are not cut off from help when they need it most. Through our partnership with the CPC, we were able to raise '124 through the online registration form. We are very grateful to everyone who chose to add an extra '1 to the cost of their ticket or donated whilst at the event, and thankful to the CloserStill Media team for choosing us as a charity partner.'

The Clinical Pharmacy Congress was very happy to be working with Pharmacist Support for this year's CPC and have them on board as our nominated charity. Supporting pharmacy professionals and their families is a matter close to our heart and we are proud to be working with a charity that achieves exactly that. If you would like to contribute to our Pharmacy Support fundraising drive and help to raise vital funds for the charity, please visit their website to make a donation. Thank you.