Abstract 27. Pharmacist personas: a survey of pharmacists’ needs, goals, motivations, and pain points

Abstract Introduction In England, pharmacists are using their clinical skills and knowledge to support patients and healthcare professionals. Currently, pharmacists provide specialist services in GP surgeries, work as part of multidisciplinary teams, as well as offer urgent care for minor illnesses and vaccinations in the community.1 From 2026, all newly qualified pharmacists will be independent prescribers. To keep pace with this rapid expansion pharmacists must be able to confidently navigate complex career pathways and training. Aim To develop ‘pharmacist personas’ that guide pharmacists through the different career stages helping them choose pathways that fit with their individual goals and motivations while simultaneously offering opportunities for professional development and learning. Personas are a way of representing a group of people who share similar characteristics. Methods An anonymised online cross-sectional survey was sent to pharmacists registered with the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC; n ~ 16 273) who gave permission to be contacted when joining the Centre for Postgraduate Pharmacy Education (CPPE). The survey was distributed via email using the CPPE database. It employed three types of questionnaire (1) closed, multiple choice, (2) Likert-type and (3) free text questions. The questions focused on pharmacists’ individual and professional needs, goals, motivations and pain points, (which refer to the specific challenges and problems faced by participants).2 The multiple choice and Likert-type questions were analysed using Stata. Inferential statistics were applied for subgroup comparisons including t-test for continuous variables and Fisher’s exact tests for categorical variables with significance set at p 0.05. The free-text data were analysed using Leximancer, a text-mining software application that automatically codes large qualitative datasets by identifying major themes and concepts. Results A total of 253 respondents accessed the survey. Of 183 respondents who reported their main sector of employment, 28.4% worked in primary care, 24.6% in community pharmacy, 23.0% in secondary care, and 24.1% across sectors such as education, integrated care boards, and the pharmaceutical industry. Analysis of motivations by sector showed no significant differences between them with one exception—working conditions (primary: 67.3% (n = 35), community: 53.3% (n = 24), secondary: 38.1%, (n = 16), p = 0.01). The analysis of free text data on motivation and career identified 10 descriptive codes for each sector: learning more responsibility; developing clinical skills/specialisms; Independent Prescriber (IP) qualifications; plans to move sector; retirement/leave profession; working conditions including pay; work-life balance; move to another sector and miscellaneous. In total, 127 respondents were placed into one of five archetype categories, refined from the initial seven types. Nearly half of all respondents (n = 62, 48.8%) were categorised under ‘aspirational/early adopter/patient driven’ whilst 19.7% (n = 25) were given the ‘family/work-life balance’ archetype. From the remaining archetypes, 15.0% (n = 19) were ‘undecided/evolving’; 10.2% (n = 13) were ‘wild card/miscellaneous’ and 6.3% (n = 8) were ‘content/the settler.’ Conclusion Our analysis established common archetypes of pharmacists’ individual and professional needs, goals, motivations, and pain points. The limitation of the study is the low uptake of the survey, which weakens the representativeness of findings.