Kia ora from …. Michael Hammond

Workplaces and community pharmacies all over the country have either completed or are in the middle of their flu vaccination programmes.

I am sure many of you are part of those programmes and know that this involves a heavy additional workload for many pharmacists and other members of the pharmacy team.

With pharmacists, and pharmacies, already experiencing high demand as the seasons change, it’s a great time to be thinking about the best way of staying well yourself and ensuring your teams keep healthy too.

There are many ways you can take steps to stay well and we’ve compiled some resources to help our members with that: Wellness : Pharmaceutical Society of NZ (psnz.org.nz).

Self-care matters - you can’t help others if you’re unwell or affected by short and long-term stressors. Creating a plan that helps move the obstacles out of your way so you can be a bit more in control of work and non-work life helps.

There are other resources out there that could be worth exploring including a book The Well-Gardened Mind by Sue Stuart-Smith, and a talk from Brené Brown - on Anxiety, Calm and Over/Under Functioning.

There is this Ted Talk from Daria Long which really resonated with me and I have continued to utilise the tools I learnt from this. The talk is titled An ER doctor on triaging your “crazy busy” life.

Another option is a podcast from Kate Bowler, a Canadian academic with a single mission: “giving you permission to feel human”.