Dr Hayley Gorton
Suicide prevention training for community pharmacy teams
The importance of pharmacies as frontline healthcare providers has been evident during the pandemic – including stepping up to provide COVID-19 vaccinations. Policymakers increasingly value the skills of the modern pharmacist and their accessibility for local communities. Dr Hayley Gorton, Senior Lecturer in Pharmacy Practice at the University of Huddersfield, has identified another potential key role for community pharmacists and their teams – suicide prevention. She says: “When I attended the annual conference of the International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP) in 2015 I realised that I was the only pharmacist amongst the 700 or more people there. I asked myself what I would do if someone came into my pharmacy who was possibly in crisis and who I thought might be contemplating suicide.” Dr Gorton began to explore the issue with colleagues in pharmacy circles and realised there were gaps in knowledge. She recalls: “It was clear that this was an area where community pharmacists and their teams had a role to play, and I felt it was important to take this further.”
Building the evidence This insight spurred Dr Gorton into a research project in which she led interviews with pharmacists, pharmacy technicians and pharmacy counter staff. 12 | DISCOVER 2022
She says:
“It was really important to talk to those other staff because they are often the first people that a customer would see. And, indeed, many of them reported interactions with people who were thinking about suicide. Reflecting on those experiences, they felt that training could equip them with the skills to be a useful gatekeeper and to have valuable conversations with those people.” Seven years on from that conference epiphany and following research into practice in the UK and North America, many of Dr Gorton’s insights and research findings are now reflected in official thinking and in the work of community pharmacies.
