Stressors among Pharmacists in Home Care (2nd Report)

Abstract

This study aimed to clarify the current status of stress among pharmacists in home health care. We mailed a stress questionnaire to 633 community pharmacies receiving home health care in Aichi Prefecture. Two hundred fifty-seven valid responses were collected for 43 questions and the mean and standard deviation were calculated for each of seven factors extracted by factor analysis in previous studies. The results showed that pharmacists in home health care were stressed about building trusting relationships with patients, behavior including verbal abuse by patients, the work environment, and tasks such as workload. Comparison by attribute showed that women, younger pharmacists with shorter experience, and full-time pharmacists with more opportunities to interact with patients felt more stress. In terminal care, “death of the patient” was a stressor, and pharmacists who had no experience with terminally ill patients were found to feel more stressed. Our findings suggest that a training system for acquiring knowledge about home health care and the end-of-life care as well as the development of the work environment may help reduce the stress of pharmacists in home health care.