From leadership research to district action: Future pharmacists and climate action: a qualitative study of students’ views on environmental sustainability in education and practice

AI-assisted editorial implementation guide. Proposed district actions are separate from the original authors’ findings and recommendations. Independent peer review of this guide is not asserted.

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Evidence and transfer

Education-related source: verify which participants, institutions and outcomes were actually studied before district adoption. Source publication type: research-article. License and identity checks do not establish study quality or causality.

Original authors’ abstract, reproduced under the source license:

Introduction Awareness of planetary health has grown across healthcare professions, and the pharmacy sector, responsible for the lifecycle of medicines from production to disposal, plays a significant role in both perpetuating and mitigating environmental harm. However, pharmacy education omits environmental sustainability as a structured component. Aim To explore pharmacy students’ perceptions of environmental sustainability within their education and future professional roles, focusing on their awareness, attitudes, and perceived barriers or enablers to integrating sustainability in pharmacy education and practice. Method A qualitative study was conducted at a university in Northern Ireland, utilising semi-structured interviews with pharmacy students across all four years of their studies. Purposive sampling was used. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed inductively using Braun and Clarke’s six-phase approach to thematic analysis. Results Sixteen students were interviewed, with data saturation reached at the 14th interview and confirmed through researcher consensus and transcript review. Six themes emerged (mean interview length = 45 ± 10 min): (1) Sustainability as an overlooked area – limited or fragmented curricular coverage; (2) Narrow understanding of waste – awareness focused on disposal and packaging, with little recognition of wider pharmaceutical impacts; (3) Pharmacy as both waste generator and sustainability site – examples included medicines returns, digitalisation, and hospital “green teams”; (4) Integrating sustainability into education – preference for interactive, experiential learning (e.g., guest speakers, placements); (5) Barriers to change – patient resistance, behavioural inertia, and competing curricular demands; (6) Policy, incentives, and leadership as enablers – systemic and financial support deemed essential for sustainable practice. Conclusion Pharmacy students recognise the importance of environmental sustainability but perceive significant gaps in both education and practice. While they value opportunities for experiential learning and see potential for pharmacy to contribute positively, systemic barriers and limited curricular integration hinder progress. Embedding sustainability into pharmacy education, supported by leadership, policy, and incentives, will be critical to preparing future pharmacists as both healthcare providers and environmental stewards. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11096-025-02053-4.

Study methods

This study was reported in line with the Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Research (COREQ) 32-item checklist [17]. The checklist covers three domains: (1) research team and reflexivity, (2) study design, and (3) analysis and findings. Key elements included researcher credentials and reflexivity, purposive sampling across all years of the pharmacy programme, audio-recorded and verbatim-transcribed interviews, and inductive thematic analysis following Braun and Clarke’s six-phase approach [18]. Trustworthiness was ensured through reflexive journaling, peer debriefing, and maintaining an audit trail. Participant quotations are presented to illustrate themes, ensuring transparency between data and interpretation.

Limitations

This study has several limitations that should be acknowledged. First, the research was conducted at a single university in Northern Ireland, which may limit the transferability of findings to pharmacy students in other regions or educational contexts. Differences in curricula, regulatory frameworks, and cultural perspectives on sustainability may lead to varied experiences elsewhere. Second, the reliance on self-reported views in interviews introduces the possibility of recall bias or social desirability bias, as participants may have under- or overstated their awareness of sustainability issues. Finally, as data collection relied on students’ perceptions, the study cannot establish how sustainability is formally embedded in the curriculum but rather reflects how it is received and understood by learners.

A 90-day district inquiry

Days 1–15 · Appraise. Read the source methods, recruitment, comparator, outcomes and limitations. Record how the study setting differs from your district and which claim the design can support.
Days 16–30 · Design. Choose one school improvement question with teachers. Protect a short shared planning cycle, agree an instructional change and use a common rubric for examining student work. Agree participation, privacy protections, baseline and stopping rules before starting.
Days 31–60 · Observe. Collect the pre-agreed measures, keep a log of implementation changes and invite confidential voluntary feedback. Preserve existing support for staff and learners.
Days 61–90 · Decide. Review implementation fidelity, teacher time and independently scored student work against a recorded baseline. Examine access differences and competing explanations before attributing changes to leadership. Make a dated decision to stop, revise or extend the inquiry.

Board decision brief

Present the local problem, source setting, evidence limits, intervention, responsible owner, total cost, measured changes and uncertainty. Separate staff perceptions, implementation measures and student learning outcomes.

Attribution and reuse

Kingston Rajiah; Annabelle McArthur. Future pharmacists and climate action: a qualitative study of students’ views on environmental sustainability in education and practice. International Journal of Clinical Pharmacy (2025-11-22). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11096-025-02053-4

Prepared 2026-11-07. Source authorship and DOI are preserved. The abstract and source passages are attributed extracts; this editorial guide is offered under the same CC BY 4.0 license.