Workload Analysis of Community Pharmacists

Abstract

Objectives: To analyze the workload and determine standard working times of community pharmacists, and to calculate manpower of pharmacists in drugstores. Methods: This research was a cross-sectional descriptive study of community pharmacists at 8 pharmacies in Bangkok accredited by the Pharmacy council of Thailand. The study collected data on community pharmacist's work by using stopwatch method. Community pharmacists timed working durations keepers spent in 2 categories of work--1) basic pharmacy services, including drug preparation and dispensing, referrals, monitoring of adverse reactions, information service, recording the patient's history, drug preparations according to prescription; and 2) supplementary services, including screening for chronic non-communicable disease, screening for sexually transmitted diseases and providing smoking cessation services. Results: The pharmacies in the study had an average of 65 patients per day. Most of the activities of community pharmacists were drug preparation and dispensing (1,283 activities or 40.18%), followed by information services (402 activities or 12.59%). The activities involving to the largest number of drug items were preparation and dispensing with an average of 3.75 drugs per patient, followed by screening for chronic non-communicable disease with an average of 2.25 drugs per patient. The average time spent on basic pharmacy services was 53 minutes 11 seconds, and that spent on providing health promotion services was 54 minutes 39 seconds. The total annual workload of community pharmacists was 3,345 hours. Drug preparation and dispensing took 814 hours, followed by referral with workload of 559 hours. Conclusion: Manpower of community pharmacists per workload is 1 person per 1 pharmacy, which is sufficient to perform services at pharmacies with 12 hours of services.