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Changes to Prevent Burnout rates in Pharmacy Profession

Burnout is a state of mental or physical exhaustion due to emotional stress or work

overload when honoring duty calls. Job burnout is a medical diagnosis that presents as fatigue,

insomnia, anxiety, cynicism, emotional numbness, and lack of creativity. Like other healthcare

providers, pharmacists experience burnout due to prolonged working stress that affects their

body infrastructure. The coronavirus pandemic inflicted occupational stress in addition to routine

work due to the demand for intensive supportive care for infected patients putting a

magnanimous strain on healthcare forces. The pharmacists increased patient awareness through

precautionary measures, supplied surgical masks and sanitary reagents for handwashing

purposes, and boosted patient morale to overcome the pandemic. Consequences of burnout are

patient dissatisfaction, medication errors, and increased malpractice lawsuits. Notable causes of

burnout in regular work are overload due to understaffing, overworking, poor work-life balance,

and ungrateful colleagues and environment.

Changes that help reduce or prevent burnout in the pharmacy include social interactions,

activities outside work, balancing work and life, sufficient sleep, and proper nutritional life.

Reducing work overload involves hiring skilled, technical, and competent pharmacists to

improve efficiency in delivering pharmaceutical care. Adequate pharmacists in a hospital allow

division of labor which reduces work overload. Reducing working hours due to adequate skilled

and competent pharmacists promote service delivery without depleting energy. Further training
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of pharmacists through continued education promotes job specialization, increasing the expertise

necessary for efficiency. Health organization promotes continued learning through webinars,

podcasts, and sponsoring postgraduate studies to have a high entry of specialized workers.

Hospitals and community pharmacies should adopt modern technology in their settings to

save time when handling patients. Health information systems facilitate medication dispensing

and patient data retention to allow easy access and retrieval of relevant medication history.

Proper documentation of patient data helps sort the patient’s needs and work with the urgency of

need. Properly documented hypersensitivity history allows efficient pharmaceutical care with

reduced medication errors. Health information systems improve efficiency hence

reducing/preventing burnout associated with physical processes.

Interprofessional collaboration helps reduce/prevent burnout through cooperation and

coordination and guides the interprofessional teams towards a specific, measurable goal; quality

patient care. Interprofessional meetings and ward rounds help consolidate and harmonize patient

data to eradicate any difficulty that might hamper smooth pharmaceutical care. Excellent

collaboration between pharmacists and other healthcare providers increases the awareness of

patient needs and discharges, thus allowing early planning to reduce work congestion.

The hospitals should create a welfare association that allows continuous social and

professional interactions to help reduce the stress associated with work. The association

organizes a sporting competition to allow the body to produce good-feeling hormones associated

with exercise. The competitions help improve pharmacists' fitness index, increase endurance to

stress, and translate to the working environment—a sound mind in a sound body trump barriers

due to resilience acquired in sporting activities.

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The hospitals should also create mental health programs that comprehensively assess the

welfare of pharmacists. Regular appointments with a therapist help venting of issues that

unshackle a profession from the bondage of job stress. The mental wellness of health

professionals is an underexplored realm that needs deeper investment. Psychological assessment

of pharmacists helps eradicate the false sense of invincibility and indefatigability that act as a

reservoir for building work-related stress. The therapists act as a stable support system in the

hardest of times, thus providing a protective blanket against stress-induced burnout. Mental

health programs assess pharmacists' sleeping patterns and nutritional behaviors, which help

modulate irresponsible lifestyle practices that jeopardize one’s sanity—correcting poor sleeping

patterns or dietary behaviors arrest work burnout.