0: Welcome to the A JP podcast,
A podcast for pharmacists by pharmacists where we discuss current events,
relevant topics, and emerging issues. I'm your host, Carle Oo.
And together with the A JP,
I'm bringing you the opinions and expertise of different pharmacists to discuss
their views and insights on topics relevant to pharmacists.
Please like and rate each episode and subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss
an episode.
1: So my name is Jenny Kirschner, I'm a pharmacist and I've worked across retail,
pharmacy and hospital pharmacy and as a national health programmes pharmacist as
well. And I'm the founder of pals,
which stands for Pharmacy Addressing Loneliness and Social Isolation,
and also the founder of the World First Pharmacist training programme on
loneliness. Thank you for having me.
2: Thank you so much for your time. Jenny,
wanted to find out about what prompted you want to undertake this
research and producer course. Course.
1: Yeah,
so I experienced a lot of loneliness in my twenties and thirties
and it really was a very painful experience.
And like many people who experienced loneliness,
there's a lot of shame and a lot of stigma. So I hid it very well.
I even remember working at the hospital that I was working at as a clinical
pharmacist,
and to the outside I was really outgoing and so
people wouldn't have known. But at home in my private life, I was living alone.
I felt very lonely.
So I really felt for a long time that people should
talk about this more because as I learned more about loneliness,
I learned that it didn't mean something was wrong with me,
it was just really human,
and it just actually was a warning sign to me to say, or an alert to say,
Hey, the relationship quality that you want,
you are not getting and therefore you're feeling lonely. So once I realised and
learned more about this and learned about the impacts that long-term
loneliness can have on health,
I thought actually I'd like to do something.
I wish there was something available for me at the time that could have
demystified a lot of things and helped give an explanation and context so I
would've been supported to make my way through loneliness and then
out of loneliness with the right support.
So really that it came from my own experiences of loneliness
and also realising that pharmacists see patients struggling with loneliness all
of the time. And I think often we know that,
but we don't necessarily do anything about it. We are not comfortable.
We feel like it's outside of our scope.
We feel like it might open Pandora's box and be too much,
and we wouldn't know what to do with it. So I thought, well,
actually there's a lot that we can do that doesn't take much time,
doesn't cost much,
but could be deeply transformational for our patients,
shifting them away from, or again,
helping them through their loneliness experience. So that was really the drive.
2: Thank you. Can you tell us a little bit about the prevalence of it and yeah,
social media, things like that.
What has caused it to increase in the population and who are the people who are
most affected?
1: So the statistics are unbelievable actually.
And I mean unbelievable in it's hard to actually believe that this is true.
So one in three Australians feel lonely and one
in six feel what's called chronic loneliness or persistent
loneliness or intense loneliness, I should say. Sorry, intense loneliness.
So that's a large number.
So there are many risk factors and triggers which are different that can
contribute to someone feeling lonely. But before I touch on some of them,
I just want to remind us all that being lonely or experiencing loneliness is a
human experience that at some point we will all have.
So loneliness is not a mental illness.
It's really important to distinguish here.
Loneliness can increase your chances of experiencing depression or anxiety,
and if you were depressed and anxious, perhaps you might feel more lonely,
but it is not a mental illness, it is really human,
right? So when I give you these numbers, it might be surprising on the one hand,
and on the other hand, well,
we're humans who transition through lots of things in life,
and there are times that we would be at increased risk of loneliness.
So let me talk about a couple of those things. So things like triggers.
So for example, if you've had someone bereaved,
if you have moved out of home to go and study at university.
So all these lifestyle or influencing factors can
increases your chance of feeling lonely. But as pharmacists,
we also see patients at high risk because of perhaps more demographics
or other influencing factors such as socioeconomic status,
or if you've come and you're a migrant or you don't speak English and you're in
an area that's just English speaking,
there's information showing patients on opioid replacement therapy programmes,
they're at high risk of loneliness. New moms,
all the new moms that come into the pharmacy,
there's a life transition there where suddenly they are having a different
identity or an identity crisis and they're not necessarily surrounded by people.
And a really interesting and important point here also is that
loneliness doesn't just affect the elderly population.
So contrary to what might feel like an obvious sum being
elderly and therefore feeling lonely in Australia,
in fact the population most at risk of loneliness currently are the 18 to 25
year olds.
So let's all just let that sink in for a moment because when you're in that
peak time of feeling like you imagine, life is great,
to imagine that there are so many people feeling lonely
is profoundly disturbing. And I think you touched on it before,
we've got a different landscape.
The kids are engaging with technology all
of the time. Now, technology per se doesn't necessarily cause loneliness.
It's how it's being used. So think of all the places where we used to hang out,
go to the movies and you might see someone have popcorn,
and now you sit at home and watch Netflix. You used to go to,
as a mom, perhaps the library for library time to collect some books,
and now you might listen to audio. There's meetings of the team and Zoom.
So all of our interactions either being replaced with or
being impacted by technology.
So for young adults who are using,
not even going to university,
I mean there's a lot of courses that are still online.
So there's a limit in the amount of actual time that you can have
for opportunities for social connection,
but also social skill development is being impacted.
Covid is a contributing factor also.
So the next phase at the moment, people term,
this era,
the last 10 years or so have been a race for attention.
So you've got all this social media and all the marketing,
and we're really in a battlefield of trying to get your attention.
What they're talking about with AI and AI bots and agencies is
really a race
to grab your intimacy and they call it the weaponization of loneliness.
So if you've got someone who's feeling vulnerable due to feeling isolated
and or lonely,
then if you offer them some shiny new object that's there all the time and
really feels like it's understanding you and knows you well,
and they're not showing any of the nuances of what it is to be a human,
they're not disappointing you. They're not letting you down.
They're not confrontational. They're available 24 hours a day.
Then there's something alluring about that if you're feeling vulnerable.
And the challenge with that is
you can't replace the nuances of what it is to have face-to-face human
connection.
We are wired as human beings for human
connection in real life, human connection. Now technology,
if you're in a remote area and you can't access in,
it can be useful to connect people,
elderly people into generational connections. It can facilitate.
But if we get into the path of it replacing human interaction,
then there's real concern about the future of humanity actually in that
space, which I've gone a bit deep there. We've gone all into ai. But.
2: No, I appreciate it because I dunno,
you keep hearing about people talking about covid taking another way that you've
just mentioned it, talking about covid and the impacts,
and even on young children who couldn't go to school and couldn't go to
childcare and lost a lot of the social skill development during that stage,
and we probably won't see the impacts yet for the next few years,
but there's that, and people are saying that even politically,
everyone's just so polarised now,
and it's just creating more and more division and separation.
So there's so many social aspects as well causing it.
So I guess I would say with all of this going on in the environment,
I guess it makes sense that a lot more people are impacted by loneliness.
What are your thoughts?
1: Yeah, no, I absolutely agree.
I think loneliness has been around for a long time
because we are human,
but there are factors that are influencing the amount of or the acute
nature of loneliness. And the challenge also with loneliness,
we've touched on it before, is if we are not talking about it,
if we're health professionals, for example, not discussing it,
then we are not empowering our patients and other people,
other humans to realise, oh,
this is just a sign to me that my social relationships are not where I want them
to be, and I'm not nurturing that. So what can I do?
We are leaving it in the space of shame and stigma where people
internalise the experience of loneliness to feel like something's wrong with
them,
to feel like they're not worthy of love or connection to feel like they can't
reach out long-term. Loneliness has maladaptive
cognition affects meaning that people start to feel like even though you need
connection as the remedy,
you start to withdraw more socially because you feel judged because you feel
like people don't get you, you are not worthy.
And so it's kind of counterintuitive.
You actually step further and further away from people rather than being open to
the connection that you need to start to shift you through that experience.
So I think to answer your question,
I think there's a lot of work to be done because we are not even talking about
it.
The US surgeon general in the US put out an
advisory on how America should address this,
and part of a statement that he talks about, which I really think gives context,
is that we need to be approaching loneliness the same way we
have been approaching other public health issues like obesity, smoking,
and tobacco, and even over there they talk about the opioid crisis.
That is the degree of impact that loneliness can have on help. They're on par.
And if we can understand that as health professionals,
which is why I created the evidence-based training programme,
if you really comprehend the impact that this has,
then I feel like it's a professional responsibility that we start to do
something about that. So yes,
I agree with your sentiment.
2: Thank you. I guess thinking about introverts, extroverts,
meaningful connections, how can this look different for different people?
1: Great question.
I'll start by saying no one is immune to loneliness,
and I think that kind of actually answers your question,
but it doesn't matter whether you're an introvert or an extrovert or you are
young or you're old,
or if you're in a room full of people or if you're in a room alone,
you can still experience loneliness.
I'll take this moment to answer your question,
but just divert a tiny bit to share that loneliness is different to social
isolation and this is really important.
So loneliness is a subjective experience that if I feel lonely than
I am lonely. Whereas social isolation is a number. So for example,
if you see someone living alone,
they're isolated or they don't have many interactions or no interactions,
then they would be classified as isolated because that's objective,
that's a number. Whereas you can be in a room full of people. I mean,
I'm sure we've all experienced this and still feel lonely.
So coming back to your question,
you can be introverted or extroverted and still feel lonely.
It just depends on the person.
So there's no prescriptive number of how many or how much contact you need
to as a
protective factor against isolation or loneliness or loneliness specifically.
Sorry, there's no specific number.
It's just what your individual needs are, your individual social needs.
So an important part of working through loneliness is identifying or what do I
need?
Am I someone who likes to engage with a couple of people or do I like being
crowded? What is nourishing for me?
And then make sure that you can craft that. And if you don't know, well,
that's part of this beautiful journey that loneliness can offer is that ask
you acknowledge this is feeling like I'm lonely,
giving people the language to acknowledge it,
and then really assessing what makes me feel good,
what environments make me feel good, what kind of people,
what kind of conversations,
and then go forth and create that landscape for yourself. So it's not a
simple answer other than to say everybody's individual,
their needs for social connection are very different.
Everyone can experience loneliness.
But if you go through the process of learning about yourself,
knowing what makes you feel connected,
and if partly this is about connection to yourself,
am I being authentic as a person in the world? And if I'm being authentic,
then what kind of people share those same values?
And then when you engage with them,
that's more likely to be meaningful connection.
And then you determine whether you need a little dose of that or a lot of dose
of that,
a larger dose of that you get to determine based on when your cup feels
full in its simplest terminology.
2: Thank you. That makes a lot of sense.
You've mentioned the stigma and the shame that comes with it.
So can you tell us a little bit again about that from the perspective of the
individual who is feeling lonely?
1: Yeah, as I kind of touched on before,
because it's a little bit, well, again, it's not mental health,
but let's bring up mental health as a comparison for understanding stigma and
shame. I think we've
taken quite a few steps in Australia to shift some of the stigma.
Are you okay? Dave, for example,
do a great job at allowing people to share and realise that they're allowed to
share that they're not okay. We haven't yet got there with loneliness.
So internally, what happens when you're feeling lonely,
really at the core you feel like there's something wrong with you?
What is wrong with me that people that I'm not connecting in with other humans,
and it's so visceral.
So just at the core of what it is to be a human to connect,
that if you are not connected, it feels like something is wrong with you,
you're not looking at other people blaming them, you're feeling like,
what am I deficit in? What is not good enough about me?
And then what happens is you start to, as I mentioned, kind of withdraw further.
So I think the stigma and the shame stops people
admitting that they're lonely and therefore stops 'em getting the help they need
to move through it.
So it's a real deterrent to addressing loneliness at a
high level
in the last six months in Australia and globally. But in Australia,
there's been a shift. You'll see A, B, C doing
reports or radio interviews on people who are lonely.
So there's some help.
There's some shift going on where people are starting to talk about it.
And I have people tell me that they're lonely. When I experienced loneliness,
I couldn't say the word.
I remember I was telling a friend about this idea of a programme that I was
going to create to help address this. And when I mentioned the word loneliness
and she's one of my best friends, I whispered the word. It wasn't on purpose.
I just couldn't say I couldn't relate myself to that experience of
loneliness because it's very painful.
There are MRI studies that have been done that look at pathways in the brain and
the pathways in the brain that are activated during physical pain are similarly
activated when you experience loneliness.
So it's physically a painful experience.
So the shame and the stigma,
it's very alive in the experience. I found it, as I said,
hard to say the word when I was going through it, and I feel like that,
and we can perhaps get to this in a moment,
part of the role of the pharmacist is to help de-stigmatize loneliness,
help to normalise it so we can just talk about it. Because again,
reiterating what I've said a few times, it's really human.
It's really human for us to desire and crave meaningful
connection and to feel seen and be heard and valued as a human being.
2: Thank you. We've mentioned social skills as well,
and I guess in the times that people may not have the same opportunities to
develop their social skills as they might've had in the past,
what changes have you seen in your research as well with social skill
development and where we're at now?
1: I dunno if I've got a full complete answer to that other than to say I've seen
more and more social skill development programmes coming up,
especially I've got two young children at school and I have paid
for, I mean,
there was an offering at the school where they at lunchtime had social skill
development. They didn't call it that. They called it funtime lunchtime,
where people who were having more challenging experiences connecting in the
school ground, which can be such a confronting place,
they scaffold and help children learn the skills to manage
negotiation and conflict and joining play.
And if they're not interested in the programme,
how to leave that kind of play and enter another group.
So I think ideally this starts at an early age. I mean,
I think it scores something that's very much alive in my mind now is
neurodiversity and difference in ways of learning and difference in ways of
being. And I'll talk about the school playground, the school environment.
It is really challenging heartbreakingly challenging for kids who learn
differently to be in a school system who only kind of see a particular way.
And I think what's hard is unless we have support for the children to
learn all children,
those who are neurotypical and those who are neurodivergent to help each other
bridge the gap of how to connect,
then that's setting up kids for a really a lifetime of challenge in their social
space. And everybody craves connection.
We might need different amounts and it also might look different.
There are children perhaps or adults who don't enjoy eye contact as much as
their form of communication,
but they may play side by side that is just as valid,
but we all need to understand that so we can respect different ways
of play and different ways that connection looks.
Again, coming back to your question,
which is now kind of past my mind, can you just rejig my mind?
2: Yeah. It was about social skills.
1: Yes, yes, thank you.
So I think I'm seeing lots of programmes crop up and pop up for young
people and more people with disabilities, for example,
or other people because there's a recognition that there's a skill in this.
We learn as humans how to have respectful conversations,
how to have attentive listening,
how to engage and ask questions with the other person. Reciprocally.
These are things that don't necessarily naturally come and also depends on what
you've been exposed to in your household and how you've learned to engage.
So social skill development is one core component.
There are a couple of other components.
It's also opportunities for social engagement.
So if children aren't invited to parties, for example,
if you're not being included, you don't have those opportunities.
And also needing to take into account what makes someone comfortable to engage
in a social opportunity. So if someone doesn't like large crowds,
and I'm going on this particular stream, it's riping my mind at the moment,
but if it's very noisy or too loud when we're not giving the right opportunities
for individuals
to engage or to find the like-minded individuals where they feel
comfortable to connect. So there's social skill development,
there's opportunities again where pharmacy can play a role.
Many pharmacies have health events or health
initiatives in the pharmacy. Sometimes they have educational events.
These are opportunities where people can come along in an environment where they
trust and they feel safe that they can come and be themselves and perhaps
mingle with other people.
And then there's also other things like we talked about skills and
opportunities, and then some of the cognition. So as I mentioned,
the brain changes over time.
If you've been chronically lonely and you might need things like CBT or some
other interventions or positive reframing of your mindset to
realise you're not being judged the way you think you are or you are worthy
of being in certain environments. So there's a spectrum of things.
At the moment, they do not have the best evidence-based approach.
That's how new this space is. In terms of research,
they definitely think cognitive behavioural therapy or some of that
cognitive behavioural therapy is most evidence-based,
but that's for people who are chronically lonely.
And then all the other initiatives are kind of being evaluated at present,
not only at an Australian level,
but at a world health organisation level where they have what they call,
I think it's got heat maps or their maps, evidence maps, evidence gap maps.
So there's maps of a whole range of interventions,
everything from companion robot pets through to social skill
programmes individually or in groups.
And they've kind of ranked how much evidence is currently available for the
different interventions. But this is new space.
And if I was to say one thing, I'd say as pharmacists,
we should do something rather than nothing.
And what we're doing is got little to no risk at all.
Just acknowledging that your patients are lonely goes a long
way to letting someone kind of drop and feel seen.
So even though I'm sharing that we don't exactly know the best evidence approach
at the moment, that's not to say we shouldn't do anything.
We absolutely have a role to play in helping to raise awareness and
de-stigmatize and normalise and provide
opportunities or encourage opportunities for social connection.
2: Thank you. And the term social prescribing,
I've been hearing that a lot more lately,
and I thought I'd find out from you what does that actually entail?
1: So I'm going to read you the consensus definition if that's okay,
because I feel, and then I'll explain it. So this says,
social prescribing is a means for trusted individuals in
clinical and community settings to identify that a person has
non-medical health related social needs,
and to subsequently connect them to nonclinical supports and services within
the community by co-producing a social prescription,
which is a non-medical prescription to improve health and wellbeing and to
strengthen community connections. So at a very simple level,
rather than prescribing a medication for someone,
if you find somebody has non-medical health related social needs that we are
prescribing something that is non-medical by connecting them to
something in a social activity or a social service in your
local area. So for example, it might be volunteering,
it might be going to play bowls,
it might be what's the new one?
Pickle club or Pickle Pickle, pickle Ball. Pickle Ball.
But the important thing here, and I'll highlight the word, is co-producing.
So this isn't a pharmacist or a GP or a trusted individual saying, Hey,
let me prescribe for you to go to tennis.
It's actually sitting down with a person to hear them,
to actively listen to them,
to understand what is meaningful to them and what would make their life
great.
And then helping to co-design and bridge the gap between that desire that they
have and what's available in the local community.
2: So my next question was going to be practical skills pharmacists can use to
support patients on a daily basis, which kind of ties into that,
I guess you're saying that pharmacists are adequately placed,
they know a lot more about what's going on in the local community and having the
opportunity to talk to the patients and help identify what's important to them
to bridge that gap.
So I wanted to find out practical skills that pharmacists can use on a daily
basis to bring those together.
1: So I guess the most important thing,
and I'll just kind of flag here if it's okay, the training,
the World First Pharmacist training on loneliness.
So it's a training programme that's created that it's worth actually looking,
if you're interested in the subject, it's worth taking a deep dive. Five hours.
It's comprehensive, and it's got interviews with global experts,
including the World Health Organisation and other people,
including pharmacists who are on the ground already doing this kind of work.
So I'm going to give you a top level view of what's covered in there in terms of
what the pharmacist can do.
But in terms of taking a deep dive into the practicals and the health impacts,
it might be worth having a look at. You can find it for PSA members, it's free.
And for other people there's a cost. But so at a high level,
what pharmacists can do at a patient level is talk about loneliness,
as we've mentioned, is when you identify someone, if you see someone,
don't avoid the subject. What you learn in the training programme is how to talk
about loneliness.
Some people might not use the word loneliness because of the stigma and shame,
but you could still through conversation if speaking to someone,
you could pick up if someone's not connecting with anyone and they're
feeling like they have to deal with all the challenges themselves.
So number one is that we can talk about loneliness.
We can also increase awareness of the impacts of loneliness on health.
So as pharmacists,
we give advice on healthy eating and exercise as part of holistic care. I mean,
you wouldn't dispense a medication for a patient who's a diabetic and not think
about the food if you know that they're coming in and eating McDonald's.
I just feel like you'd make a point because as a pharmacist, you're trusted,
you know them well, you have a relationship, and you would feel an obligation,
a sense of professional responsibility to just let them know in the appropriate
manner to think about their food or their food choices because of the impacts it
has. And in the same way, there's a new kind of fancy term coming out,
social health,
same thing when you're speaking to someone, when you're advising them,
when you're seeing someone in pain perhaps because of loneliness,
and you need to find out through conversation.
You I think have a professional responsibility to educate them,
to let them know that they deserve connection and it's important for their
health because loneliness can impact physical, mental, and cognitive health.
And if they know that social connection is protective,
they know that, then they can go forward and do something about it.
So I think we can talk about loneliness at a patient level,
increase awareness of the health impacts of loneliness,
but also the protective factor involved in connection.
And then you could also, what you've mentioned, talk about social prescribing.
So if you know of a patient and they always talk to you about, actually,
I'm going to share a story to give the perfect example I just saw on LinkedIn,
a pharmacist shared a story saying that she had a particular customer who was
always resistant to chatting, very closed off,
and each time she tried a little bit more just to get him to open up. And one
day she started to talk about fishing,
and she said he totally softened and he opened and they started
to over the subsequent interactions, talk about stories,
fishing stories,
and she said all it needed was her hearing and understanding
about him and then being patient and slowly increasing
the focus on that part of the conversation.
And so that was a relationship now that shifted that experience.
The patient was no longer grumpy when he came in.
Every time he'd softened and he would come in for that connection.
So if for example, that patient loves fishing,
or as part of your job, you could look what's in your area,
you could do a quick Google search if you're more savvy at that than your
patient, if you know there's a fishing club for that age group and it's safe and
appropriate for that gentleman,
then you could suggest or you could share with him a flyer or call the
organisation on his behalf or just give him the steps to take to join
that club if there's such a thing that exists. So when we talk about
referring people or connecting people in a social prescribing framework,
part of it could be that connecting them to something local or there are lots of
social prescribing programmes that are being run out of primary health networks
around Australia, and you need to go looking for them. And if you find them,
then you can refer patients into this programme because these programmes have
what's called link workers. Now. Link worker is a new term,
and it's kind of a new stream of occupation where the
sole job of a link worker is to facilitate the connection for someone between
what is meaningful to them and what is available.
So that patient might need someone to hand hold their hand for their
first encounter or the second, and that's what they're willing to do.
Or the link worker might just call up and make the appointment for them or enrol
them in a programme, and that might be sufficient. So again,
tying it back to what the pharmacist can do, talk about loneliness,
increase awareness, know what social prescribing is,
look for programmes that are available in your area,
specific social prescribing programmes. Reach out, introduce yourself,
look at what's available in your community and have those things available that
if you meet somebody,
you can share what's available as a bridge between the healthcare sector
and the community care sector.
And I'll give two more concepts of what I think people could think about is
sharing resources with patients. Flies like a CMI, but a social version,
what is loneliness? There is a self-care card available.
And then also into the future,
there are validated screening tools for loneliness.
So in medication reviews or home medication reviews,
in addition to asking about the lifestyle components,
you could ask either a single item measure question or a four item measure
question around someone's experience of loneliness. Some of the measures use the
word loneliness, and some of them don't indirect.
But there are ways that we into the future could start to capture this data as
part of holistic profile of that patient and holistic care.
So yeah, these are some of a sprinkle of ideas of practically. Again,
I don't want people to be intimidated.
I want people just to start by acknowledging that yes,
I see loneliness in many of my patients that it's really human.
It's okay,
learn how to talk about it so patients feel safe to open up and you as a
pharmacist feel safe. I mean,
pharmacists feel lonely within the health profession.
There's lots of loneliness as there are with gps also.
So it's important to be able to be vulnerable yourself and
share your stories with patients. So yeah,
I had a bit of an average day and I felt quite lonely on the weekend.
And if you are comfortable doing that,
it's unbelievable what can come as a result of that honesty and the
vulnerability and the connections that result there.
2: Brilliant, thank you. I'll ask you one more question,
but I guess beyond the scope of the training, I guess,
what did you want to share with pharmacists that have completed the training or
what they can do after?
1: What I would love to see and where I think this is going is that
I'm on the leadership team of what's called the International Social Prescribing
Pharmacy Association.
So there's some pharmacists globally who have come together to define or
propose the role that pharmacy can play in this space.
And we need some pilots to really evaluate and
understand what's feasible,
where are the remuneration funding models, where are they going to come from?
All of these things.
I'm not at all proposing in terms of social prescribing that we should be doing
this stuff for free. A lot of us do it anyway as pharmacists.
So I think the bigger picture is we will see some larger scale pilots involving
pharmacy, so we can collect the data and then determine a roadmap and a pathway.
But right now,
I feel like if you've done the training and you feel like you're not sure where
to start,
just start small. There are stories in the training programme of pharmacists who
even have, for example, a couch instead of chairs in their pharmacy.
And she said to me the other day,
she did it because it feels more inviting rather than clinical,
and it invites people to sit and to chat.
And she had a customer who went home and sewed pillows for pillow for the
couch that she has in the pharmacy.
There are other stories of pharmacists who write little scribble notes when
there's medication deliveries to people.
So when someone's not actually coming into the pharmacy,
there's a lost opportunity, therefore connection of seeing someone,
her little notes that kind of just say, have a nice day, a smiley face,
and you send that. Now this pharmacist visited this patient.
It was during Covid at the time, she was sharing the story,
and this lady had collected in an envelope all of the little
scribble notes that the pharmacist had written. That's how meaningful they were,
because sometimes the pharmacist is the only person that patient will
see all week. So my call to action here is,
let's think about the bigger picture.
Let's increase workforce capacity by knowing about the issue and then start
to do little things that don't take too much time, but the morale.
It will impact the morale in the pharmacy holistically. Other staff,
it's a bit contagious,
and there's a job satisfaction that is so deep within that.
I'm going to share one more story because it's profound.
There was a story about a patient who was in the hospital, and sorry,
in an aged care facility,
and they were trying to do de-prescribing for that patient.
That patient didn't want the medications taken off
because at the nighttime, the nurse came around to hand the medications,
and during that exchange, there was a physical touch.
You can feel that.
You can hear that we are lucky as pharmacists,
we see people all of the time. They trust us, we know them.
We have the opportunity to sprinkle magic,
a little bit of magic to change the trajectory of their day. So pharmacists,
to walk away here realising,
I'm not asking you to take on a whole nother programme.
I'm not asking you to change everything.
I'm just asking you to no longer ignore seeing patients who are lonely
to recognise that just by giving them a couple of more minutes of attention
that that could really change the day for that person Overseas,
they have supermarkets now with queues that are intentional
for people who want to chat longer. So rather than just rush them out,
people sit there and talk to people for longer.
If you've got capacity in your pharmacy to give someone two extra minutes,
you or pharmacy assistance, everybody. If you've got capacity,
it goes a long way.
So I guess that's my call to action is do something, not nothing.
It doesn't have to take much time. It just takes, what does it take?
It just takes a decision. It just takes, yeah,
it just takes a moment of recognising that it's not always about
medication as a solution, that it's actually,
we are providing connection.
And I always go back to the whole term community pharmacy.
Community pharmacy is a community within itself. It is.
So I'm just saying let's lean into that a little bit more.
Let's enhance our visibility about being the community aspect of the
community pharmacy.
2: Thank you so much.
Is there anything that you'd like to share that I haven't asked you?
1: No, I just want to thank you in particular and personally for being interested
enough in this subject. Again,
it's not about medicines and it's not about revenue or business.
It's actually about being better humans. And really,
I mean, it sounds aspirational,
but creating a better world for ourselves and also for the little ones,
like if we can value in a workplace,
if we can value social connection,
then that has an energetic shift that changes things for everybody.
We as staff, as employees will turn up more,
we'll show up more as ourselves. We'll bring more innovation,
we'll bring more creativity, we'll bring more passion.
We just need permission to do that.
It's going to take leadership for someone to say,
I value connection in this workplace and with the patients that we
serve. So let's introduce that as a cultural shift.
And I can hand on heart.
I feel pretty confident to say that that will have its own beautiful flow on
effects to create a nicer workplace as well as profound
transformation to humanity. Sounds very big, but I do believe that.
2: Thank you. And from my perspective,
I wanted to know more about it because I still think,
when you think about it for the 18 to 24 year olds and you think about what
impact you can make on this group of individuals who are going to be out there
in the workforce, forming families, relationships,
what can we do to help support them with better social skills and
coping mechanisms and conflict resolution?
I think we can all continue to learn so much in just how we can develop
ourselves to be better and better communicators,
better at understanding ourselves and understanding others and better at
supporting ourselves and others in the process as well. So I.
1: Just want to say to that, you've just, that's profound to think about.
All the pharmacy interns who come into a workplace who
are about that age,
many international pharmacy students and interns who are living alone,
working very hard, studying very hard,
don't have the finances or time necessarily to socialise, and again,
a different language, perhaps you as a preceptor,
as a workplace could absolutely provide an environment that could
nurture that individual's development within the workplace and without,
and I've even heard stories of pharmacy internships said their preceptors have
gone out of the way to invite them to football clubs with them and explained
what it was about,
and that was totally transformative for that person individually and as a
professional. So yes, we, you're right, the 18 to 25 year olds,
actually, the pharmacy profession could do a lot to do to
support that cohort who currently are showing that they're at the highest risk
of loneliness. So thank you for that point.
2: Thank you so much. Thank you.
0: We hope you've enjoyed this episode of the A JP podcast.
If you have any thoughts, comments, or suggestions about this episode,
please visit the AJP website forum@aj.com au and join the
conversation.
If you have any suggestions for future topics or would like to participate in
the podcast, please follow us on Twitter at ajp podcast and send us a message.