Ling Weng Wong

Abstract

Background: Pharmacy services have expanded tremendously over the past few decades to provide comprehensive patient-centered pharmaceutical care. This expansion inevitably places a growing demand on the pharmacy workforce. Positive correlations have been established between job satisfaction and key factors such as motivation, job performance, productivity, organizational commitment and most importantly patient safety and satisfaction. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted among all fully registered pharmacists (FRPs) in Miri Hospital using a questionnaire that has been previously validated (n = 47). This questionnaire consists of four parts with aims to capture the demographic profile of the respondents, factors affecting job satisfaction, assessment of job satisfaction and organizational commitment and assessment of decision to stay or leave their current employer, the Ministry of Health (MOH). Participants were also invited to express their opinion on how to improve the pharmacy service in the public workforce through open- ended question. Results: A total of 42 pharmacists (response rate 85.7%) in Miri Hospital participated in this survey. Most of the respondents in this study were female (81%) and of Chinese ethnicity (78.6%), with a median age of 31 years old. The proportion of single and married respondents were similar (54.8% and 45.2% respectively). The length of employment of the respondents in MOH ranged from 3 to 13 years, with a median of 7 years. The mean job satisfaction and organizational commitment scores were 60.81 (standard deviation (SD) 8.70) and 56.48 (SD 7.21) respectively out of a maximum possible score of 90.0. 95.2% of the respondents indicated strong inclination to remain in their current job. Conclusion: Gaining insight into the factors which influence job satisfaction and organizational commitment holds significance in reducing the turnover rate of pharmacists and enhancing their productivity levels. Our study showed moderate job satisfaction and organizational commitment among pharmacists in Miri Hospital. Job satisfaction does not seem to differ for all respondents; nevertheless, female respondents were found to be more committed the organization.