BETHESDA, MD 25 March 2010—New research suggests that the full-time pharmacist work force in hospitals has grown more stable and its members now spend about one fourth of the workweek providing patient care services.
According to a report released March 1 by Pharmacy Manpower Project Inc., 12.9% of full-time hospital pharmacists in 2009 had worked less than three years for their current employer—down from 21% in 2004 and 26% in 2000.
Job stability. Full-time hospital pharmacists who participated in the 2009 work-force survey had been working an average of 13.4 years for their current employer. The average length of employment for this segment of survey participants had been 9.9 years in 2004 and 9.2 years in 2000.
As a whole, 16.4% of full-time practicing pharmacists in 2009 had not yet reached a third anniversary with their current employer.
Supermarkets and chains were the only practice settings in which pharmacists had better job stability than in hospitals at the three-year mark. Only pharmacists in the independent practice setting had worked for their current employer, on average, longer than hospital pharmacists.
Activities. Full-time hospital pharmacists reported spending on average 27% of their workweek assessing and evaluating patients’ medication-related needs, monitoring and adjusting patients’ treatments to attain desired outcomes, and providing other services designed for patient care management.
They spent on average 43% of their workweek preparing, distributing, and administering pharmaceuticals, providing the associated consultations, and interacting with other professionals during the medication-dispensing process.
Given a choice, however, hospital pharmacists indicated they would rather spend 34% of their workweek providing patient care services and 35% of their time in medication-dispensing activities.
Douglas J. Scheckelhoff, an ASHP vice president and the Society’s representative to the Pharmacy Manpower Project, said the single-digit gap between actual and desired time spent by full-time hospital pharmacists on work activities "is encouraging but still needs to evolve."
"Pharmacists need to look for ways to develop a practice model that allows them to spend more time assisting patients in the use of their medications and providing safe and effective medication therapy as opposed to hands-on dispensing," Scheckelhoff said.
At many institutions, he said, dispensing activities will become the domain of pharmacy technicians and automation.
Some 64% of full-time hospital pharmacists rated the workload level at their pharmacy as high or excessively high—up from 61% in 2004.
Yet the percentage of full-time hospital pharmacists reporting that their current workload had a negative or very negative effect on their opportunity to solve drug-therapy problems or "reduce potential errors" decreased: 29% in 2009 reported a detrimental effect on opportunities to solve drug-therapy problems, down from 38% in 2004; and 34% in 2009 reported a detrimental effect on opportunities to reduce potential errors, down from 46% in 2004.
Scheckelhoff attributed these findings to the changing and evolving jobs and role of hospital pharmacists.
They are now expected to solve drug-therapy problems and prevent potential medication errors from occurring, he said. "And it looks like that they’re in fact doing that . . . to a greater extent as compared to five years ago."
Increasingly more hospital pharmacists, he said, describe their model of practice as an integrated one, in which they spend part of their time dispensing medications and part of their time providing patient care activities.
That practice model puts hospital pharmacists in a better position to avert medication errors and solve drug-therapy problems, Scheckelhoff said.
Recession. The Pharmacy Manpower Project has sponsored a national pharmacist work-force study every four or five years since 2000.
All of the studies to date have been conducted by the Midwest Pharmacy Workforce Research Consortium, a group of researchers from state-supported universities with pharmacy schools.
The most recent study is based on data collected in the spring and summer of 2009.
Slightly more than half of the pharmacists in the random sample who received a survey returned it. Among the 1395 surveys turned in were 318 from pharmacists who indicated that their primary place of employment was a hospital.
The data-collection period turned out to be toward the end of and just after the recession that the federal government said started in December 2007 and ended in July 2009.
Among all hospital pharmacists, 34% said their employer in the past year had restructured pharmacists’ work schedules to save labor costs, according to a presentation the consortium prepared for a national pharmacy meeting.
In addition, 14% of hospital pharmacists reported that their employer had reduced pharmacists’ work hours.
No more than 5% of hospital pharmacists reported that their employer had laid off pharmacists or offered pharmacists an incentive to retire early.
Scheckelhoff said the recession may in part explain the finding that 54.2% of the full-time hospital pharmacist work force in 2009 was male—up from 49.8% in 2005.
Many men who previously worked part-time in a hospital pharmacy or had retired from one chose to return to work, increase their schedule to full-time, or delay retirement altogether, he said.
Another important factor, he said, is the work preference of women.
Although constituting the majority of new pharmacy-school graduates, women are much more likely than men to work part-time in the early years of their career, Scheckelhoff said.
