Last month, I broke the (very abstract) ‘fourth wall’ between myself and potential readers of this blog. In the traditional sense, a fourth wall, of course, is a conceptual barrier between people presenting works (normally of fiction) and their audiences, such that, not unlike a two-way mirror, actors/writers/performers proceed as though their recipients are not there. Breaking it, then, involves an active acknowledgement of the audience and some ensuing form of address. My own breach of the fourth wall involved a direct question posed on the social media platform ‘X’ (formerly known as Twitter) to gauge engagement with my PJ blogs, hosted monthly since October 2022. Of course, such a poll might not accomplish much beyond the cursory exchange that ensued, and my quiet delight that more than a quarter of those responding said they had read four or more. Nonetheless, this direct reader engagement also validated for me that writing still has a place in a world dominated by social media posts, podcasts and other forms of communication that are now the norm. Another group that no doubt takes pleasure at the prospect of the written word is the collaboration #RxWritingChallenge, hosted by the Wulling Center for Innovation & Scholarship in Pharmacy Education, which has been running since 2017. The purpose of the group is to lessen the pain of writing through a focused period, in which pharmacy writers across the world commit to write for 30 minutes each day for 14 days, twice per year, of which the last period took place from 25 March to 5 April 2024. There is no doubt merit in committing to a regular, timed period of writing, regardless of what the author is attempting to produce, perhaps even for those writing fiction. For now, though, I’ll return to my main aim, which is to provide a taste of recent papers published in the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s research journals.
