ADVERTISEMENT
Common Causes of Pharmacist Burnout: Readers Provide Their Insights
We recently surveyed our readership for the most common causes of pharmacist burnout. A majority of respondents identified staffing and scheduling issues (76%), followed by conflict with leadership (13%) and other causes (6%).
Readers also offered the following feedback:
"We have actually lost full-time equivalents even though our patient load has increased. Also the poor leadership decisions for the tools we use. The new cloud-based pharmacy software we switched to has actually slowed down our dispensing by 20%."
"While there are adequate staff to perform the required tasks, when someone is absent for any reason all, the tasks still have to be performed. There are no adequate staff, either cross trained or readily available, to step in and perform the duties. This applies to both support staff and the pharmacists themselves."
"Director that lies on day one: out to remove current staff and bring in his own, remove personal time off from staff who earned and saved, break up teams that work together, [and] bring in new young staff that are not team players."
"The demands of filling prescriptions, giving vaccines, care calls to patients and the documentation with that, comprehensive medication reviews, medication therapy management, and emails from direct managers about 'Do this today!' are getting so stressful. Pharmacists cannot keep this up. Even with technicians giving vaccines, all the other tasks being forced on us is making the task we were originally set to do riskier. Filling a prescription for the right person, the right medication, in the right manner is still the most important item on our to do list. All that other stuff is superfluous. That's not what pharmacy was meant to be."
"When you have few staff and are running back and forth to the register and would love nothing more than to go to the bathroom, you are looking at a typical day. No breaks, no help, and no understanding from your higher ups."
"Working 12-, 15- and 17-hour shifts was great in your twenties, but as we mature in numbers, it gets to be extremely difficult. Especially when you are wearing all of the hats: the pharmacist, cashier, drive-through window attendant, technician, etc. Burnout is inevitable!"
"The act of saying no to a patient who can't afford something or doesn't have insurance is harmful to the psyche and the spirit, and we are forced to do this many times daily/weekly. Most pharmacists don't have the language or understanding to even realize this is happening to them. Moral injury is a betrayal of the core self in doing something we know is unethical and immoral, and yet, we are unable to avoid it. This also goes for nurses, physicians, all of us in medicine, but I think pharmacists get the brunt of it given the nature of our work."
"Our minds and cognitive labor are the pillars of our work, and yet caring for our physical bodies is ironically neglected, to abusive levels. It's bizarre that we are expected to care for others without having basic environmental standards to be able to care for ourselves. I used to get urinary tract infections because of dehydration and lack of ability to take bathroom breaks without deeply upsetting the workflows. What other industry does this?"
We at Pharmacy Learning Network are hoping to continue the conversation. How does your organization address burnout among its pharmacy employees? If action has not been taken yet, where do you think administrators should start?
If you would like to share your opinion on what is the most common cause of burnout, you can find the recent poll here.
