Throughout October, we celebrated Black History Month with livestreams, blogs and social posts of black pharmacists across the UK. Catch up with our highlights from the month:
Blogs range from career paths, maternity support, recognition and visibility:
“Open conversations with your HR team and line manager will facilitate discussion about the required provision of support to the employee during maternity/parental leave”, says Ojali Yusuff, Primary Care Network and Integrated Urgent Care Pharmacist, discussing how ‘Maternity support must be equitable’.
“I often challenge other Black professionals to take those ‘scary’ steps into the spaces that we are repeatedly told are not for us”, says Mary Adegboyega, a Dual Licensed Clinical Pharmacist currently practicing in Canada, as she talks about ‘The importance of recognising Black excellence in Pharmacy’.
“Museums are the keepers of our national history and identity, so we have a responsibility to share everyone’s history”, says Catherine Walker, Museum Officer at RPS, discussing the importance of ‘Making museums more inclusive’.
“It’s important that any barriers faced by certain groups of people are looked into and a lot of the time that can only happen when you have that visible representation”, says Bayo Adegbite during a discussion with Tase Oputu and Lola Dabiri from our English and Scottish Pharmacy Boards about ‘The importance of visibility, representation and role models’.
“I was able to use what I had learnt in practice and I understood why things are done a certain way – so my challenge was more about learning how medicines worked and how they were made”, says member of the RPS Community Pharmacy Expert Advisory Group Patricia Ojo as we reflected on last year’s Black History Month, ‘From nurse to pharmacist: my dual career’.
On social media, our #MuseumMondays series looked at the cultivation of ginger, a tamarind specimen collected in 1932 and a picture of the Commonwealth Pharmaceutical Association meeting in November 1970.
Visit our Youtube account to watch back our live streams:
Aman Doll, RPS Head of Professional Belonging was joined by pharmacy colleagues about the theme for this year’s Black History Month, Time for Change: Action not Words.
As well as reading the blog on the importance of visibility, representation and role models, you can also watch the live stream.