Analysis of Grocery Chain Pharmacists' Work-related Behaviors

Objective: To measure grocery chain pharmacists' work-related behaviors to assess the impact of a Pharmaceutical Care Certificate Program (PCCP) and other future interventions intended to alter pharmacists' practice behaviors.

Design: This study used multidimensional work sampling (MWS), a work measurement methodology that breaks "work" into three components: activity (what was done), contact (with whom the activity was performed), and function (the purpose or objective of the activity). Pharmacists were signaled at random intervals during the workday by a random signal generator. A selection was made from a list of items in each of the three dimensions of work to form an activity-contact-function combination code that described the work-related behavior at that point in time.

Setting And Participants: Pharmacists in 15 grocery chain stores in the Indianapolis area; 20 pharmacists were enrolled in Purdue University's PCCP and 10 served as controls. Data were collected for a period of six weeks during April through June 1997 before the beginning of the PCCP program.

Main Outcome Measures: Pharmacists' work-related behaviors.

Results: Writing/keyboarding was the most frequently recorded activity (22%), followed by one-to-one meetings (21.6%), and drug preparation (18%). Pharmacists spent most of their time working alone (62.9%), while a smaller but still substantial proportion of time was spent interacting with patients (17.9%). The most frequently recorded purpose (i.e., function) of pharmacists' activities was drug distribution (23.9%), followed by personal time (12.4%), receiving or transferring a medication order (10.2%), and patient counseling (6.6%). Out of a possible, 1,760 activity-contact-function combinations, 10 accounted for 46.3% of all reported observations, with "Prepare drug-Self-Drug distribution" representing the most frequently recorded activity-contact-function combination (15.7%).

Conclusion: MWS is useful in helping grocery chain management better understand how pharmacy personnel are currently being utilized. This study provides a baseline for evaluating the impact of training programs or other alterations in the practice environment on pharmacists' work-related behaviors.