“The best feedback I have had is where I have spoken least and listened the most.”

A Listening Friend shares their experience supporting pharmacists, students and trainees, highlighting the importance of human connection for wellbeing and how the Listening Friends service can make a difference.

Our Listening Friends service provides a confidential and supportive space for our pharmacy family to speak with trained volunteer pharmacists about the stresses and pressures they’re facing. Rather than giving advice, our volunteers offer a listening ear, allowing time and space to talk things through and find clarity.

In this article, you’ll read about loneliness from the view point of one of our Listening Friends and how this peer support service could help you or your pharmacy team members through difficulties.

As part of Pharmacist ACTNow, in 2025 we are focusing on the importance of connection. Have you seen the impact of connection and/or loneliness in the workplace throughout your career?

I have seen the effectiveness of teams where there is good connection between members of the team and with their senior. Connected teams support each other through difficult periods and, in many cases, without the need for a member of the team to reach out for help. Connection often leads to a happier workplace and certainly contributes to better productivity. I have also experienced loneliness in the workplace, whether that is a manager burdened by responsibility and an inability to reach out to the team or their senior due to a fear of being labelled as not capable, to lone practitioners working in isolation and under pressure with no one to turn to for peer support.

Being a Listening Friend volunteer, how do you see connection and loneliness impacting the pharmacists you support?

This is the root cause of the anxiety or stress of many of the pharmacists who contact a Listening Friend peer for support. I have supported pharmacists who have been deliberately isolated from the team through bullying in the workplace, who have been affected by long term illness forcing isolation from their team. I have seen poor connection between trainers and supervisors causing relationship breakdown or poor communication resulting in high levels of concern and stress.

Are there any circumstances in which pharmacists find themselves that particularly cause loneliness?

The most common cause of loneliness that I have experienced among the pharmacists that I support is when the trainee / supervisor relationship breaks down. Trainees are very anxious that this might result in a failure to progress upsetting their career plans. They are often panicked particularly near to the time when they need to be signed off for the exam and are unsure of where to turn. Less common but no less stressful is the isolation and concern experienced by pharmacists who are undergoing fitness to practice investigation. In some cases, pharmacists feel isolated and perhaps shunned by colleagues and sometimes their stress is driven by a sense of injustice or anger. The stress of this situation is exacerbated by the length of time the process takes to complete and a lack of communication from the Fitness to Practice process.

A Listening Friend is a peer who, because of their career and life experience, understands the context of the issues which are causing you problems.

Have you seen personal circumstances that can exacerbate loneliness for pharmacists?

I have supported trainee pharmacists who have failed the registration examination, some of whom have had family commitments and were budgeting based on an expected pharmacist’s income and weren’t keen to seek financial assistance from family or friends until they could pass the examination. At the same time other colleagues who had passed the exam had moved on and were able to develop their career. This led to the trainee isolating themselves from family, friends and colleagues, leading to loneliness and exacerbating stress and anxiety.

How do you see the Listening Friends service providing connection to callers, and how has this helped?

A Listening Friend is a pharmacist or a retired pharmacist and can convey to the caller a sense of understanding of the context of the situation the caller finds themselves in because they have either experienced or observed something similar during their professional life. Whilst a Listening Friend will not disclose their own personal experience the caller knows that empathy for their situation is coming from a place of genuine peer understanding without the need for further explanation. The caller then feels more comfortable discussing their feelings knowing that the listener understands the professional circumstances within which they are being experienced.

There is research that indicates that in addition to the beneficiary of a volunteer service being positively impacted, the wellbeing of the volunteer can be positively impacted as well. Has this been your experience?

There is no doubt in my mind of the benefit I derive from being a Listening Friend. We receive fantastic training and support from the Counselling and Family Centre. I have learned listening skills which have improved me as a person being more likely to listen to family and friends when they speak to me. Additionally, I get an enormous lift when a client tells me that the call has helped them. It makes me feel good about myself and makes me want to help even more. I am sure that this contributes to a happier and more fulfilled me.

If there is someone out there who is considering asking for a Listening Friend, but isn’t sure if they want to go ahead with it, what would you say to them?

I would say do not hesitate! You are over the first hurdle in admitting to yourself that you have a problem – that takes great courage. A Listening Friend can hear your issues in complete confidence and without any fear of the issues being talked about or going anywhere else. As mentioned above a Listening Friend is a peer who, because of their career and life experience, understands the context of the issues which are causing you problems. The Listening Friend will not advise you what to do about the problem but talking about it can often clarify things and help you come up with your own plan to resolve the issue.

The best feedback I have had from a client is where I have spoken least and listened the most.

If the issue which you raise is a specific problem such as an employment issue or financial difficulty the Listening Friend can signpost you via the Pharmacist Support office to specialised assistance. I have had callers who come with one problem and when we talk through the issues it becomes clear that there are underlying issues outside the remit of the Listening Friend. For example, the issue might be more deep-rooted where professional counselling can help. The Listening Friend can help you identify this need and, with your permission, ask Pharmacist Support to organise counselling (in some circumstances free of charge) from the Counselling and Family Centre who can provide expert professional support.

Our peer support can help you

If you need someone to talk to anonymously, please reach out to us to find out more about our Listening Friends service.

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