The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 272 No 7293 p429
3 April 2004

Society summary

Share your stress problems with a friend

The Listening Friends Scheme is providing support for an increasing number of pharmacists with stress in their lives. Judy Kirby reports

An old maxim says that a problem shared is a problem halved. A cliché perhaps, but it holds true for the volunteers who run the profession’s Listening Friends Scheme. Their telephone helpline service supports a growing number of stressed pharmacists through difficult times in their lives.

Callers to the service are guaranteed confidentiality. Although the scheme is financed by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s Benevolent Fund, it is run independently so that callers can feel safe in discussing problems openly. The volunteers on the other end of the line are all pharmacists and will be familiar with many of the workplace issues that may be sparking the caller’s distress.

“Anonymity really helps people to offload their anxiety and fears. It’s rather like a confessional,” says Ian Phillips, a listening friend for almost six years. “Callers are often suffering from stress rather than depression. We try to restore a sense of balance to them. When people are ground down they can’t do obvious things and their normal cognitive processes don’t work. When they tell you their stories they are almost answering their problems themselves, but they need a kickstart to get their energy and confidence back.”

The listening friends service started in 1995 when the Society realised that pharmacists appearing before disciplinary committees were often under considerable personal stress and that earlier help might have prevented their ordeal. “But we’re not running a full-blown counselling service,” says Kathryn Featherstone, one of the scheme’s three co-ordinators, all of whom have counselling qualifications. “It’s not what I would call counselling. It’s pharmacists talking to pharmacists.”

Ms Featherstone, who is head of medicines management for South Tyneside Primary Care Trust, says that pharmacists applying to become listening friends often undergo a culture shock. “Pharmacists are used to giving advice and solving problems, but this is about helping people to find their own solutions.”

Co-ordinators pick up initial calls to a central answerphone and field them to available listening friends. Co-ordinators are sensitive to their volunteers’ own needs, checking first that the time is convenient and there are no pressing problems in the listening friend’s own life.

Fielding the calls can be a stress in itself. “In the first week of March I had 12 calls,” recalls Ms Featherstone, “and I was struggling to find people to take them. Although we have a register of 25 volunteers, they are not always available, due to illness, maternity leave or other personal reasons.”

Just one call can sometimes put a caller back on track but usually a series of telephone conversations is needed before the caller feels able to move on. Not all calls are about the caller’s emotional state. Some need practical guidance, such as preregistration trainees wanting legal or employment advice but even here the information offered is optional.

“We’re not allowed to give advice,” says Anne Maclean, who became a listening friend on the same day as Ian Phillips. “We suggest options.” Ms Maclean is a full-time superintendent for a small company owning three pharmacies. As a mother of two teenagers and handling a responsible job she is well placed to know the balancing act of family life and full-time work. In her life she found that people were already coming to her for support.

“I seemed to be a listening friend before I joined the scheme. At work patients sought me out, and family and friends came to me when they were ill or had relationship problems.” But Ms Maclean, like all the trained listening friends, knows how to separate her own experience from callers’ problems. “Some things callers bring are close to what may be happening in your own life. You will not do them any favours if you are carrying your own baggage, so you don’t accept the call, or you arrange for them to speak to another listening friend.”

Anne Maclean had acquired counselling skills along her career from personal training courses and from following an intense interest in psychology. “I was just interested,” she says. “I read a lot, particularly Desmond Morris’s work on body language.”

The anonymous, undirected nature of the service brings a frustration for listening friends in that they never know how situations resolve in their caller’s lives. “You may develop a close bond with them, but you never know the outcome. You wonder, ‘how did they resolve things?’ But you have to let them go and not call them back later if they don’t want that.”

Although records are not kept beyond a minimal period, listening friends do evaluate trends in the nature of calls. Ms Maclean says she receives more calls from women — particularly young women employed by multiples who work long hours with little recognition. other callers are older pharmacists who find new documentation requirements onerous. “They are worried and put off what they are being asked to do beyond their normal work and they want to come off the register.”

Twice a year the listening friends spend two days in intense training and evaluation of the scheme. “The aim of the scheme is not to give advice but to help people find their own solutions,” says Beverly Nicol, Benevolent Fund co-ordinator. “We try to teach and encourage listening friends neutrality, how to listen and suspend judgement and not to give advice. Pharmacists are used to helping people and this is why our feedback sessions during regular training are so useful as it gives the listening friends a safe place in which to practise and hone their listening skills with colleagues who will be able to identify if they slip into ‘advice mode’.”

An ability to respond with absolute confidentiality is vital to success, she says. If a caller describes people or events that the listening friend recognises, it may be difficult to stay impartial. In such a case, the listening friend will suggest to the caller that it may be best to pass them on to someone with no knowledge of the situation.

In its early year, the service dealt with an average of 12 calls a month, but the number has recently been increasing — putting a strain on the small bank of dedicated volunteers. More are actively being sought (see Panel).

Ian Phillips feels the work is highly rewarding. “I’m putting something back into a profession that has been good to me,” he says. Like Anne Mclean, he has an interest in personal development. “I’m a hybrid — a pharmacist involved with management.”

Sometimes callers can be desperate. “I have had people who have said that in dark moments they considered that suicide would solve their problems,” say Mr Phillips. “When this happens we are not on our own and we have to know our limitations. We can go to our co-ordinators for help in these cases.”

Ian Phillips has a supportive family who understand he may spend long evenings on the telephone. But co-ordinators try to ensure he spends time with his wife. He feels that the work, although he never knows how stories end, has helped to avoid disciplinary action in many cases and ultimately may have saved lives. “There may be tears at the beginning of a call,” he says, “but at the end of that little bit of time there can be laughter. That person is in a more resourceful state at the end of the call than at the start. That’s the best we can do.”


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