#0009 The relationship between organizational climate, job stress, workplace burnout, and retention of pharmacists
Why do pharmacists quit sooner? The roles of stress, burnout, and organizational climate
Experts have noted that healthcare professionals show high turnover rates, meaning that they are more prone to staying fewer years with the same employer. These high rates carry a lot of problems for medical institutions because they complicate the recruitment, employment, and training processes and make it harder for those who do decide to stay. Therefore, understanding the underlying causes of this behavior among medical staff is important.
Though studies have pointed out that work-related stress, workplace burnout, and an unfavorable organizational climate lead to low employee retention, none have analyzed the relationships between these factors in detail. Thus, in our paper, we sought to gain insight into these relationships while focusing on hospital pharmacists, who are highly skilled professionals likely to suffer from job stress and burnout due to the very demanding nature of their work.
For this, we used the tried-and-tested Job Stress Questionnaire. We surveyed 101 pharmacists from three different hospitals in Taiwan and measured their job-related psychological stress. Through statistical analyses of the responses, we were able to pin-point several inherent links between job stress, workplace burnout, organizational climate, and the retention of pharmacists. We also found that the first three of these variables have a predictive power of 55.6% for the fourth one.
Our results provide a better understanding of the most common concerns among these employees in relation to job stress and give an idea of their point of view on their organization, personal roles, and workplace.
Most importantly, our results are concrete numerical evidence of the close association of low retention among pharmacists with several other organizational factors. These should be considered by hospital managers when formulating strategies to address related problems among their employees. Moreover, creating a less stressful workplace for pharmacists could directly improve their performance, so that they also provide better pharmacy services, increasing medication safety and benefiting patients.
Link to the original journal article:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/1348-9585.12079
Title of the paper:
The relationship between organizational climate, job stress, workplace burnout, and retention of pharmacists
Authors:
Yu‐Li Lan, Wan‐Tsui Huang, Chi‐Lan Kao, Hui‐Jung Wang
