Low salaries, heavy workloads, and limited career prospects are driving young people away from the pharmacy profession. According to a study conducted in Piedmont between 2024 and 2025, only 27% of students in Faculties of Pharmacy would choose to work as pharmacists. A survey by Community Pharmacy England, conducted across 4,300 pharmacies in England, found that 70% of pharmacists report a negative impact of their work on their mental health and overall well-being. Additionally, 95% of pharmacies report severe difficulties in recruiting staff, while 83% report excessive workloads.
Alongside the need for fair compensation and a better balance between work and personal time, pharmacists’ dissatisfaction also stems from a search for meaning in their profession and for both social and personal recognition within the healthcare context.
In this scenario, Narrative Medicine emerges as a valuable—though still underexplored—opportunity.
This project work highlights the importance of placing interpersonal relationships at the center of the profession, outlining an active role for pharmacists within the care pathway. This is achieved through the integration of Narrative Medicine tools such as narrative prompts, emotional awareness, and active listening.
Pharmacists were provided with a semi-structured narrative guide, managed through a shared digital platform, with the instruction to complete it following each meaningful interaction.
The guide consists of the following items: opening of the narrative, the person’s story, the pharmacist’s listening, duration of the narrative, conclusion of the interaction, difficulties encountered, and future perspectives.
The analysis of the 25 collected narratives, conducted according to Bury’s classification, revealed that 60% of the narratives are Core narratives, confirming the central role of the emotional dimension in pharmacy relationships.
The most frequently observed emotion is curiosity, an indicator of an already established relationship with the patient. Curiosity is a complex emotion, combining trust and surprise: only a relationship built over time can generate surprise at an unexpected story. It almost seems that pharmacists do not expect to hear such narratives in that setting: “I didn’t think they would stop to tell me.”
Many other emotions are also present, including sadness, fear, admiration, courage, agitation, and concern.
Some narratives combine Core and Moral elements, such as: “I felt pity for that poor woman” or “I felt so much tenderness.” The risk here is adopting an affective and emotional approach rather than an empathetic one. Empathy is a cognitive approach that involves understanding the patient’s experience, as described by M. Hojat. Focusing only on the emotional aspect risks losing sight of the goal of Narrative Medicine, which is to help the patient; consequently, the pharmacist may feel inadequate: “we don’t have the skills,” “I feel inappropriate.”
Metaphors frequently appear in the narratives. Images such as “we are machines that break down” are dysfunctional because they do not facilitate problem-solving. The person who used this metaphor was referring to his wife and daughter, both burdened by health problems; he shook his head, suggesting that the situation would not improve. Thus, metaphors provide immediate insight into a person’s emotional state and perspective.
Pharmacists also use metaphors: “a heavy day,” “a complex picture,” “putting oneself in others’ shoes” are just a few commonly used to describe relationships.
Analysis of the narratives shows that in 80% of cases, the opening of the narrative is initiated by the patient. Pharmacists often do not pay enough attention to the fact that the person in front of them has come to the pharmacy with a health problem, limiting themselves to dispensing medication without further inquiry, such as asking “How are you?” or “How are you doing with this medication?” Yet the need to narrate is so strong that, as Arthur Frank writes in The Wounded Storyteller, it is “as if the phone were ringing and someone were asking what is going on.” People need to talk about their illness with a healthcare professional. “Stories call us, whether we want them to or not.”
Listening is the most delicate aspect: pharmacists are not accustomed to listening and tend to interrupt. The context often does not help, as pharmacies are frequently crowded and noisy.
The average duration of each narrative is six minutes. Time is a fundamental element in enabling Narrative Medicine: pharmacy owners should adjust staffing levels to allow time for patient interaction and eliminate unnecessary tasks by automating repetitive procedures as much as possible.
Physical space is also crucial: the pharmacy is inherently an anti-narrative environment. Signs, displays, and products hinder authentic relationships and do not allow space for storytelling. To adopt a narrative approach, it is necessary to create protected areas where individuals can express themselves without fear of being overheard: counters that invite dialogue, warm and welcoming lighting, and spaces enriched with plants and free from product displays.
In conclusion, this represents an entrepreneurial challenge based on a shift in paradigm: the success of a pharmacy should not be measured by the number of receipts issued, but by the depth of the relationships built. Only by enhancing both the clinical and human role of the pharmacist can professionals rediscover motivation and patients experience real added value in the service received.