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Objective: The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in health care workers experiencing temporary or permanent changes in employment due to layoffs, quits, and postpandemic increased job demand. Analyzing the association of the COVID-19 pandemic with employment changes and results of changes for practicing pharmacists and understanding the associations with demographic and work-related factors could inform practice, policy, and educational programs. This study aimed to explore the frequency, characteristics, and results of employment status changes (ESCs) experienced by pharmacists practicing pharmacy in March 2020 (ie, the start of the COVID-19 pandemic)., Methods: A descriptive, cross-sectional survey research design was used to collect data from a random sample of 93,990 licensed pharmacists in the United States. The study team developed an online survey questionnaire designed to assess the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on pharmacists' work and work-life. The survey items used for this study related to ESCs, work-life characteristics, work characteristics in March 2020 and 2022, and demographic variables. A total of 4947 usable responses were received between November 2022 and January 2023., Results: Overall, 36.4% of respondents reported experiencing an ESC and approximately 70% of those reporting an ESC reported experiencing just 1 ECS. Overall, 39.5% of respondents who experienced an ESC stopped working (ie, were unemployed) pursuant to an ESC. Respondents who experienced an ESC reported significantly lower levels of work exhaustion and interprofessional disengagement and significantly higher levels of professional fulfillment in their current employment than respondents that did not experience an ESC., Conclusion: The overall increase in demand for workers in the health care sector appeared to provide opportunities for pharmacists, especially pharmacists with 1 to 10 years of experience, to change their employment situation, resulting in better work-life characteristics. Given projections of a pharmacist shortage, research, policy, and educational programs could determine the best practices to improve work settings and the work-life characteristics of practicing pharmacists to improve the health of the current pharmacist workforce., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest None declared., (Copyright © 2024 American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Background: Pharmacy employers want to improve pharmacists' job satisfaction, but ratings of job satisfaction are highly subjective, as evaluating job satisfaction involves weighing simultaneously the importance of multiple correlated determinants that are often perceived unequally., Objectives: To 1) describe the application of relative importance analysis in estimating the predictive ability of correlated determinants of job satisfaction, and to rank the determinants in order of relative importance, and 2) explore how the perceived relative importance of job satisfaction predictors may vary across community pharmacists' age, gender, and work setting categories., Methods: Data were obtained from the 2019 National Pharmacy Workforce Survey administered to 96,110 licensed U.S. pharmacists. Multiple regression analysis (MR) and relative weight analysis (RWA) were used to assess the predictive ability of determinants to explain pharmacists' job satisfaction. Subgroup analyses were performed to explore variations in the perceived relative importance of predictors across pharmacists' age, gender and work setting categories., Results: Over the entire sample of community pharmacists, no personal experience of workplace discrimination [RW = 0.0613, rank = 1] and less reported engagement in advanced dispensing activities [RW = 0.0235, rank = 2] were most associated with greater job satisfaction, as both predictors jointly accounted for 67.5% of the predicted criterion variance ( R 2 ). Pharmacists' compensation was observed to have the lowest perceived relative importance for predicting job satisfaction [RW = 0.0005, rank = 6], accounting for 0.5% of R 2 . Between-group comparisons showed that, no personal experience of workplace discrimination had the highest perceived relative importance for job satisfaction across pharmacists' age groups, among women, and across most work settings except small chain pharmacies. Within-group comparisons showed that pharmacists' compensation was significantly more important than professional interactions (Δ RW(PC-PPI) 0.2900 [0.0637, 0.5360]) for job satisfaction among pharmacists in large chain pharmacies, while patient-care services was significantly more important than compensation for job satisfaction in independent (Δ RW(PPS-PC) 0.1761 [0.0017, 0.5980]) and health system retail pharmacists (Δ RW(PPS-PC) 0.4190 [0.0444, 0.8303])., Conclusions: Relative importance analysis corroborated multiple regression and provided a more interpretable presentation of variable influence on community pharmacists job satisfaction as the importance of personal and workplace characteristics in how pharmacists evaluate their job satisfaction varied across age, gender and work setting categories., Competing Interests: None., (© 2023 The Authors.)

Objective. To summarize student pharmacist leadership development opportunities delivered by pharmacy programs, to describe selected opportunities, and to assess how these opportunities meet leadership development competencies. Methods. A multi-method study was conducted that comprised a systematic content analysis of pharmacy education journals, pharmacy program websites, and telephone interviews with key informants, which included open-ended questions and scaled responses. Results. Review of six articles, 37 American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP) Annual Meeting abstracts, and 138 websites resulted in the identification of 191 leadership development opportunities. These consisted of courses, projects/programs, and events/speaker series. Interviews with 12 key informants detailed unique events that developed leadership competencies. Formal assessments of student leadership development were limited and primarily focused on informal feedback and course evaluations. Conclusion. Most US pharmacy programs offer their students an array of opportunities to develop leadership abilities. Pharmacy programs should consider expanding opportunities beyond elective courses, learn from the successes of others to implement new leadership development opportunities, and bolster the assessment of student leadership competencies and outcomes.

Objective: To compare practice settings and activities of pharmacists with bachelor of science (BS) in pharmacy and doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) degrees., Methods: Data from the 2009 National Pharmacist Workforce Survey instrument were analyzed. Multivariate regression was used to examine the association of the PharmD degree with time spent in dispensing and patient care., Results: The survey response rate by pharmacists was 52%, and 562 usable responses met our inclusion criteria. Sixty-three percent of BS and 39% of PharmD pharmacists were employed in community pharmacies, compared with 21% of BS and 38% of PharmD pharmacists employed in hospital pharmacy settings. Practicing in a community setting had the strongest influence on time spent in dispensing and time spent in patient care. Among respondents with PharmD degrees, a residency was associated with less time in dispensing and more time in patient care., Conclusion: Time spent in dispensing and patient care were influenced more by practice setting than by educational degree and residency training.

Objective: Determine the effectiveness of TIMER (Tool to Improve Medications in the Elderly via Review) in helping pharmacists and pharmacy students identify drug-related problems during patient medication reviews., Methods: In a randomized, controlled study design, geriatric patient cases were sent to 136 pharmacists and 108 third-year pharmacy students who were asked to identify drug related-problems (DRPs) with and without using TIMER., Results: Pharmacists identified more tool-related DRPs using TIMER (p = 0.027). Pharmacy students identified more tool-related DRPs using TIMER in the first case (p = 0.02), but not in the second., Conclusion: TIMER increased the number of DRPs identified by practicing pharmacists and pharmacy students during medication reviews of hypothetical patient cases.