We sat down with Siobhan Dobie, Vice-Chair of Education and Training, and early careers Guild representative for the UK to catch up about EAHP Congress 2025 in Copenhagen.
Welcome back from Copenhagen Siobhan – how was your experience?
Copenhagen was great. It is a beautiful city and it was very exciting and inspiring on the pharmacy front.
How did you get involved in EAHP work? Talk me through from the beginning.
I joined the GHP as an early careers representative a few years ago and it all stemmed from there. EAHP were looking to set up an early careers network for hospital pharmacists across Europe to share experiences and collaborate.
Working closely with Prof. Roisin O’Hare, who is on the EAHP board, put forward this as an opportunity and now we have the number of countries represented up to 14. We’re looking to expand to get representation for every country.
We’ve got two representatives from the UK – myself and Robert Fitzgerald, who is an early careers representative with the GHP and also part of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society.
What does the early careers EAHP network look like?
There are meetings every two months where the constituent countries get together to discuss the workstreams we have going on. These are currently:
- Developing appeal of EAHP and involvement for young professionals
- Research support
- Social media and reach
- Funding and facilitating EAHP Congress attendance.
How were these areas of work decided on?
The goal of the early career network is to get more people involved at an earlier stage of their career.
EAHP currently has good representation from senior pharmacists and leaders in the field, but focusing on early careers helps people get involved and collaborate and understand opportunities out there.
Research support has been identified as a vital task across the country members, which aligns with the four pillars of practice from the RPS within the UK. Some countries expect hospital pharmacists to be publishing routinely. There can be barriers to this and we hope our peer support and potential forum development help break these down and will result in fewer people getting daunted. Watch this space for more developments.
We also hope to get funding and support for early career pharmacist attendance at the EAHP Congress each year, to get more people involved. Presenting posters and other work can sometimes be enablers for support from employers.
On the subject of EAHP Congress, give me your top three highlights.
The other attendees were a really big highlight for me. You’re constantly networking and it’s a great opportunity to speak to people. This is on an international level!
You get to learn so much about how other systems work and really learn from them. There’s not one way to approach a problem, which can be faced by pharmacists in many countries, so sharing approaches is great to see how other people tackle issues.
I liked the talks. The opening ceremony was fantastic because it was very inspirational looking at the future of pharmacy.
So you are giving advice to pharmacists at the beginning of their career in hospital in the UK – how can they get involved?
It can seem intimidating. There are lots of senior people involved in EAHP and the Guild. However everyone is very welcoming and overcoming that initial mental barrier is the first essential to getting involved. Take every opportunity available to you. Be ambitious.
To come back to an early point, writing up innovative work as a poster is a great way to share your work and formalise your contribution to the knowledge base. If you make an active improvement in your workplace, it may help others elsewhere across the continent. Why not present it at a European level? Be confident in your professional abilities.
Wrapping up – we’ve spoken about some challenges when it comes to attending conferences, what can people do to overcome those?
We have recognised this as a universal issue across the countries represented at the early careers network and we’re looking at ways to improve this situation, such as funding from other sources such as the pharmaceutical industry, while complying with legislation.
Employers can support attendance with funding especially if you are presenting work. Endowment funds can sometimes be used. There’s also discounted prices for pharmacists attending EAHP Congress within their first three years of practice.
Thank you so much for taking the time today to talk about your EAHP Congress experiences. Would you be happy for Guild members to contact you if they had any queries?
Yes 100%, and additionally once we set up the EAHP early careers social media presence, we can ensure Guild members see all the opportunities that are available too.