Pharmacists' attitude on the roles of pharmacy supportive personnel in hospitals under the Provincial Hospital Division, Ministry of Public Health

Abstract

The purposes of this study were to compare the actual and the expected roles and to study the current manpower situation of the hospital pharmacy supportive personnel from the perspective of hospital pharmacists in public provincial hospitals. All 755 pharmacists, including head of pharmacy departments and pharmacists, working in 92 hospitals of 12 provincial health sectors (in January 1996) were the major studied subjects. To compare the result with the perspective of hospital pharmacy technicians, sample of 97 pharmacy technicians working in 12 hospitals selected by clustered random sampling technique, one hospital from each provincial health sector, were also included in this study. Three types of self-administered survey questionnaire were mailed to subjects: one for heads of the pharmacy department, one for pharmacists, and the other for pharmacy technicians. The final response rates were 69.57% for heads of the pharmacy department, 51.28% for pharmacists, and 64.95% for pharmacy technicians. It was found that pharmacists preferred to delegate technical tasks to the trained pharmacy supportive personnel (pharmacy technicians) more than to the untrained pharmacy supportive personnel (pharmacy employees). Pharmacists expected to delegate more technical tasks to the pharmacy technicians for 7 working units of outpatient, inpatient, general production, sterile production, aseptic dispensary, inventory management and purchasing, and community service. Pharmacy technicians agreed with pharmacists' expectation for those 7 working units. For the current manpower situation, trained pharmacy supportive personnel accounted for 26.96% (pharmacy technicians 19.18% and pharmacy assistants 7.78%) and untrained for 73.04% (pharmacy employees 72.33% and personnel from other fields 0.71%) of all pharmacy supportive personnel. Pharmacists had the demand to increase the number of the pharmacy technicians for every working unit: outpatient, inpatient, general production, sterile production, aseptic dispensary, quality control, inventory management and purchasing, drug information service, community, and others. It was confirmed with the perspective of pharmacy technicians for the 6 working units of outpatient, inpatient, general production, quality control, inventory management and purchasing, and other units. The study concluded that pharmacists were willing to delegate more technical tasks to the trained pharmacy supportive personnel but facing with the problem of lacking of pharmacy technicians in the public provincial hospitals.