Next week sees the return of ACTNow, the popular wellbeing campaign from Pharmacist Support.

Kicking off this Saturday on World Pharmacists Day (September 25), this year’s campaign will run until October 29, each week focusing on one of the five themes of ensuring wellbeing – Be Active, Give, Take Notice, Keep Learning and Connect.

“The ACTNow campaign aspires to provide tools and inspiration to enable and support our pharmacy family to prioritise mental health and wellbeing in the workplace,” said the charity’s chief executive Danielle Hunt (pictured).

The pandemic has piled additional pressures onto an already overstretched and burnt-out profession, she added.

“Now more than ever, we feel we all need to work together to unpick the issues exposed over the past year and ensure that support is in place and accessible to all to help navigate our way out. To do this we feel it is essential that everyone across the profession comes together to highlight the importance of the wellbeing agenda. We want to support and enable a cultural shift in workforce wellbeing.”

During the campaign the charity, thanks to the backing of partners, the PDA, Teva UK and Day Lewis Pharmacy, will share information, resources and activities based around each of the five wellbeing themes, with activities including online workouts and weekly panel chats that will take a look at the science behind wellbeing.

The charity is launching a new wellbeing learning platform to enable individuals to take control of their own wellbeing and is also seeking to recruit people as Listening Friends volunteers, the peer support service that marks its 25th anniversary this year.

“We received a fantastic response to the ACTNow campaign last year from pharmacists, students and trainees and were able to provide over 6,800 acts of support to 4,800 individuals across the campaign period,” said Ms Hunt. “We hope to deliver an even greater impact over the coming weeks and we encourage pharmacists to sign up to the campaign and get involved.”

To pledge support and for more information visit WellbeingHub.PharmacistSupport.org.