In recent months, during the Covid-19 pandemic, community pharmacy teams have been firmly at the frontline of primary care, serving patients in difficult and demanding times.

A key priority for all has been protecting the health of pharmacy teams in the workplace, to reduce colleagues’ risks of becoming ill as far as possible, and this has involved making significant procedural and even structural changes. This can’t have been easy to implement – but pharmacies have achieved this; and have stayed open for patients.

The challenge of protecting the health of the pharmacy team while maintaining patient care became all the more important once it emerged that people in the Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) population were disproportionately threatened by Covid-19. This is a worrying finding and has raised wide debate on a broad range of concerns about health inequalities, among other issues.

With the diversity of UK pharmacy teams in mind, along with the wider context of the health, wellbeing and of BAME people, the Pharmacist has launched a survey to learn more about your views on BAME health, health inequalities, and the future protection of BAME pharmacy colleagues against Covid-19.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, incidences of verbal abuse towards staff have been reported with worrying regularity. Our survey asks if you think any of the conflict towards pharmacy teams has been racist in its origins.

We welcome your (anonymous) feedback on whether or not you have witnessed or experienced racism, prejudice or discrimination while working in the community pharmacy workplace.

Thank you for taking part. An overview of the anonymised results will be reported the Pharmacist and will form part of our ongoing coverage into these important issues.