Analysis of community pharmacists work patterns

Abstract

Understanding how professional time is spent within a community pharmacy setting is of great importance as it allows for the identification of both the strengths as well as weaknesses in the flow of pharmacy operations. To understand how community pharmacists spend their professional time within the pharmacy. To provide a clear understanding on the way professional time is distributed within the pharmacy. The way in which pharmacists spend their professional time varied between the two pharmacies and this is a result of various factors namely layout of the pharmacy, the amount of human resources supporting the pharmacist and differences in pharmacist’s working methods. The results of 40 hours of observation done in pharmacy A showed that medication dispensing is the activity which took up most of the pharmacists’ time (33%). The results of 20 hours of observation done in pharmacy B showed that the activity which took up most time was direct patient care related to chronic medication repeat dispensing (16%).