The digital learning and assessment specialist, eCom Scotland, is offering help to the UK’s 12,000 or so retail pharmacies – in particular, to help meet pharmacists’ need for education and training on digital technologies. This need was revealed via recent surveys of early career pharmacy professionals, including students, with most respondents (87.3%) saying that they lacked education and training in the area of clinical informatics.

Allan Maclean, eCom Scotland’s Marketing Manager, commented, “Other surveys of this sector – including those by the pharmacy regulator – have revealed heightened anxiety and stress levels among pharmacists due to increased workloads patient aggression and financial implications of the coronavirus pandemic. As a result, both the health service and community pharmacy owners should strive to create environments that facilitate an atmosphere of belonging and promote the discussion of stressful issues.

“Education and training will contribute to reducing pharmacists’ stress levels,” he added. “In particular, eCom can help address a lack of digital technologies training, along with helping to address staff resistance to behavioural and cultural change in adopting and implementing digital solutions.

“Furthermore, all pharmacy personnel should understand how their role contributes to person-centred care and effective collaboration with patients, members of the wider pharmacy or healthcare team, and the public.

“eCom designs and provides digital learning solutions to help people in this sector respect diversity and cultural differences, promoting the principles of equality, diversity and fairness. Importantly, these learning materials – made accessible via a learning management system, such as eNetLearn – helps people keep their knowledge and skills up-to-date,” said Allan.

“When it comes to addressing pharmacists’ mental health and wellbeing, eCom can help ensure the delivery of the highest quality learning materials to support these issues. We’re happy to make these resources available to pharmacists so that these materials can be embedded into pharmacist training.

“Our track record is impressive,” he continued, “eCom has some 25 years’ experience of working with UK organisations in many industries, including the pharmaceutical and healthcare sectors, and our learning solutions have now helped over 1m people in organisations throughout 190 countries.”

eCom is Cyber Essentials Plus certified and its suite of digital learning and assessment products is available via G-Cloud 12 – the UK Government’s framework for cloud-delivered ICT goods and services on the Digital Marketplace. Moreover, eCom was one of the first signatories to the new Customer Excellence Pledge, which aims to identify learning system vendors that promise to provide elite customer service and support.

eCom (https://www.ecomscotland.com/contact/) creates innovative learning solutions – aimed at increasing learning engagement and driving productivity – to help organisations achieve their goals. With offices in Dunfermline, Scotland, and Athens, Georgia, in the USA, but with customers from around the world, eCom focuses on the delivery, tracking and reporting of workforce learning and development through innovative technologies. Its products and services address a range of workforce management, development and training challenges, including eLearning, online assessment, blended learning, competency management and accreditation.