Listening Friend - role description

Overview

The Listening Friends are a group of volunteer pharmacists living throughout the country who provide confidential telephone help to pharmacists under stress.

The group offers volunteers:

• full and ongoing training in listening skills including two residential weekend training courses per year
• support and supervision offered by experienced coordinators
• all expenses paid and a friendly and supportive network of colleagues.

The Role of the Listening Friend

Listening Friends offers a free listening service to pharmacists suffering from stress. You will be trained to offer support regarding the particular pressures that apply to pharmacy and offer support for all causes of stress such as ill-health, family issues, and bereavement. This may include directing a member to more specialist help if needed.

Skills and Experience Required

Communication
The Listening Friend will develop and maintain communication with people on complex matters, issues and ideas in possibly complex situations. This would be shown by:

Communicating with a range of people:

• Clients; information sources; co-ordinators; colleagues
• Communicating with empathy:
• Showing understanding that changes affecting clients may be out of their control
• Showing understanding of different cultures and backgrounds
• Working to overcome differences in personal style and approach that cause difficulties in ongoing communication
• Communicating in difficult situations:
• Being supportive of clients in confusing situations
• Working with language barriers
• Working with silences
• Skilled communication in the following ways:
• Listening skills
• Non-verbal communication skills
• Reflection
• Cues
• Showing use of appropriate questioning (open, closed)
• Use of VKAD language where appropriate
• Use of metaphor where appropriate
• Working with difficulties that may arise:
• Understanding their own internal assumptions and potential assumptions by client
• Understanding own reactions to situations, sufficient to ensure they do not affect client outcome.

Policies and Procedures
The LF would work within the policies and procedures of the LF scheme, as laid out in the guidance handbook, by ensuring that they:

• Acknowledge the difference between pharmacy counselling and LF counselling, and undertake client-centred support
• Gain client agreement for any notes they take
• Keep any notes for up to one year only after the case has ended
• Have read and understood the requirements to inform the client appropriately if confidentiality needs to be broken (e.g. ongoing harm to a third party).

Personal Development
The LF would develop their own knowledge and skills and provide information to others to help their development, in the following ways:

• Attendance at LF review weekends
• Active participation in peer review / small group feedback:
• By supporting others in understanding the need for and making agreed changes
• By evaluating own and others’ work when required to do so
• By offering information to others when it will help their development
• Active participation in training sessions
• Active participation in group feedback on training and in development of an ongoing training agenda
• Active participation in the development of the LF group by discussing and agreeing with the LF team:
• The changes we can make as a team
• Constructive suggestions as to how services can be improved
• How to take the changes forward
• Development against outline skills (possibly as a Personal Development Plan or undertaken as part of overall RPSGB CPD process, if wished, by LFs still registered as Practising pharmacists)

Understanding LF’s own limitations by:

• Telephoning co-coordinators / colleagues when necessary
• Acknowledgement of skills & knowing when to refer to co-ordinators for support.

Those LFs acting as a Mentor / Buddy / Group Facilitator / Co-ordinator would undertake the following additional roles, using the skills described above:

• Acting as a mentor to new LFs
• Acting as a coach
• Acting as a facilitator in peer review / small group feedback
• Commitment

We understand that as pharmacists you are all busy people! We do, however, require a minimum commitment from volunteers to ensure that they keep up to date and receive the appropriate level of support and training.

We ask as a minimum that Listening Friends are available to take at least one call per month. We also require you to attend two residential weekend training courses per year (usually in March and November).

Application Form