1 Min
In CPD
Bookmark
Working in healthcare can be deeply rewarding but also incredibly demanding. Current stress levels within community pharmacy are high, creating a real risk of disengagement and burnout. How can you work with your team to enhance productivity and results?
There is nothing more destabilising than uncertainty, and we live in challenging times. Pharmacies across the UK are battling a medicines shortages crisis worse than they and their patients have ever experienced, all while many contractors are being forced out of business due to rising costs and slashed funding.
Services like Pharmacy First, now commissioned in all the Home Nations, offer a welcome expansion of the sector’s capabilities and a broadening of professional roles, but piling on more work inevitably carries its own costs. This is borne out by the 2024 Royal Pharmaceutical Society/Pharmacist Support Workforce Wellbeing survey, which found that 86 per cent of pharmacists were at “high risk of burnout”; these pressures are likely to be felt by the wider team too. In an environment like this, knowing how to manage your team and keep them motivated can be a tall order.
Think about your team members. Do some people you work with seem to do the bare minimum and no more? Do they sometimes seem uninterested, even though there is not necessarily anything you can put your finger on?
There are a number of reasons for disengagement, ranging from poor management and workplace conflict to inadequate leadership, poor communication, lack of career progression, poor work environment, and perhaps personal problems at home. Left unchecked, disengagement can spread, leading to demotivated employees and reduced productivity.
On the other hand, engagement leads to productivity, can reduce staff turnover and is important for another vital commodity – employee wellbeing.
