There are five fundamentals you need to bear in mind if you want to master workplace stress, whatever the cause:

1. Don't react, act!

Identify the underlying cause of the problem and keep things in perspective. Often it is as a result of overreacting and losing perspective that we begin to experience stress. Try always to remain objective, especially where other people are involved and emotions may be running high. Use friends, trusted colleagues and others who may have a valuable perspective to help analyse the situation, identify the basic issue and help suggest solutions and a way forward

2. Take control

Again, use carefully selected friends and colleagues to help define and reinforce the course of action. The key is to do something. Don't be a victim and be paralysed into inactivity

3. Communicate effectively

To help reduce the impact of pressure situations and prevent them becoming stressful situations, you must be able to:

• Organise your thoughts logically and carefully. Write things down and use bullet pointed lists to help order your thinking
• Express your ideas and instructions clearly and logically and check understanding
• Objectively identify any fundamental issues that may cause or add to stress
• Identify a clear solution or course of action
• Ensure that this solution has clear benefits to you, your patients and customers and your pharmacy.

4. Reaffirm what really matters

Remind yourself why what you do is important and how it contributes to the health and wellbeing of your local community. What's really important in your life?

5. Know what you like about your job

Reflect on what you really like about your role and try, wherever possible, to involve yourself more in those aspects. In some cases this will mean fundamental change, additional training, delegation of workload or moving to a new role. Life is short. If you don't like anything at all about your role, you should ideally consider changing what you do.