Editor’s viewpoint: Time to make a stand

Community pharmacy’s trump card has always been its accessibility. However, operating at the heart of their communities, often in areas of high deprivation with acute social pressures, makes pharmacists and their teams uniquely vulnerable to antisocial behaviour and out-and-out criminality.

This was brought home to all of us by the appalling riots earlier this month. It was deeply distressing to hear of pharmacies closing because of safety fears and shocking accounts of vandalism, violence, racism and Islamophobic abuse. 

The looting and violent clashes that wracked dozens of cities and towns are fortunately infrequent in this country, if not entirely unknown. Yet the harsh reality is that theft, robbery and intimidation, alongside verbal and physical abuse, has become an everyday occurrence for community pharmacy teams. There was a sharp increase in abusive and aggressive behaviour by patients during the pandemic and, if anything, it’s got worse since then.

Pharmacy leaders were right to echo Wes Streeting’s comments about taking a zero-tolerance approach towards people who behave in a hateful, abusive or racist manner, although this is easier said than done when such a large proportion of the workforce is female or from a South Asian background.

But more needs to be done. The sector must come together to send out the strongest possible message that no one must face violence or abuse at work. Pharmacy employers, large and small, must redouble their efforts by proactively taking whatever measures are necessary to keep their workplaces safe – no matter the cost.

The PDA’s Safer Pharmacies Charter would seem to be a useful starting point and it is unfathomable to me that many pharmacy businesses, especially the larger multiples, have not signed up to it. When questioned about this in 2022, the CCA rather sniffily said it “does not recognise the PDA as an authority on matters of pharmacy safety”.

Forget the internal politics. Now is the time for everyone to firstly acknowledge the problem and then unite behind the common cause of protecting pharmacy teams so they are safe in their place of work. It could be a matter of life or death.