Please be patient, courteous and safe when visiting your local pharmacy
All healthcare workers, including the UK’s 12,500 pharmacy teams, are there to help you.
Sadly, they sometimes experience verbal, or even physical abuse at the hands of a minority of patients and customers (for example when certain medicines are unavailable or delayed).
We want to remind all pharmacy patients and customers to be patient with pharmacy staff, who are doing their utmost to support you; treat them with courtesy, as you yourself would wish to be treated.
Alongside their day job of providing your medicines, health advice and a range of NHS services, pharmacies went above and beyond in their efforts to protect the population during the pandemic – including delivering over 20 million covid jabs. They give their all on the NHS frontline and deserve to feel safe at work.
The Assaults on Emergency Workers Act applies to all pharmacists and their teams
providing services for the NHS, so offenders may face prosecution.
NHS Staff Respect
The 2021 NHS Staff Survey for England found that 27.5% of NHS Staff experienced harassment, bullying or abuse from patients, service users, their relatives or other members of the public in the last 12 months.
Recent surveys suggest that abuse of NHS staff from patients was rising, and abuse and violence has been widely cited as a contributing factor to reduced morale amongst NHS staff.
‘We are here to help you. Thank you for treating us with respect’.
Treat pharmacy staff with courtesy, as you yourself would wish to be treated. There must be zero tolerance of abuse in any circumstances.
