Training your team and ensuring everyone's knowledge is up-to-date are important CPD triggers. We suggest that you get the team together for a training session based on the activities below and discuss the various ways in which you can offer customers and patients added care in this category.

Subject: Health headlines

This Train Your Team checklist provides support and information to run a team training session on health-related headlines. This content can also be used for your own CPD.

Reflection

• Do I understand how media health headlines are developed?
• Do I know how to find the scientific basis (if any) for specific health headlines?
• Can I spot a bad and a good piece of health-related writing?
• Am I able to reassure customers where health headlines appear extravagant?
• Can I critique scientific studies behind health headlines?
• Would I be able to communicate the findings of research behind the headlines to customers in a way that is meaningful for their health?

Training checklist

Ensure your support staff understand the following key points:

• Health headlines in the media do not necessarily reflect the rest of the story or the science behind the story. There may not even be any science behind the story
• The importance of reassuring customers where headlines are extravagant
• The importance of listening to the customer’s concerns very carefully
• How to help customers confused by health headlines
• When to refer to the pharmacist.

Action. I will:

• Get my support staff to study health headlines and stories and we will discuss them as a team
• Keep an eye open for health headlines that are likely to concern pharmacy customers and research the basis for these where possible
• Consider how health headlines can be used to improve our communication with customers
• Improve my and my team’s assessment of health headlines
• Ensure my pharmacy assistants are able to meet the points in this training checklist.

Practice points

• From which media sources do you sense your customers obtain health stories? Which newspapers, magazines, radio/TV, internet, social media (e.g. Facebook, Twitter), specialist online groups do they use?