There was additional evidence that community pharmacists are working longer hours than previously, because their job demands it.[43] Pharmacists perceived their own role to be dominated by the dispensing and checking of prescriptions

and that their workload is, in general, high.[42,43,48] Pressure from inadequate breaks and a lack of staff were seen as problematic within the community sector.[42,44–46,48] Literature searches were completed thoroughly and systematically. find more Despite this, the number of studies identified, particularly those quantifying actual workload within community pharmacies was low. Many of the studies focused more on pharmacist stress and job satisfaction. The limited number of quantitative studies identified made combining findings problematic. Selleckchem STA-9090 Consequently, the nature of this review is narrative. A formal scoring system was not applied when assessing the studies as so few had been identified, thus permitting inclusion of papers that might otherwise have been

omitted. However, any obvious limitations were critically commented upon within the description of individual papers. Due to commercial sensitivity, workload-related research conducted internally by private pharmacy companies was unavailable for the review. The findings of this review may therefore be subject to publication bias. More research is needed in the community sector to determine the level of dispensing ifenprodil undertaken and availability of (trained) support staff. No research was identified which benchmarks the rates of dispensing in community pharmacies in the UK. This subject may be particularly difficult to research due to commercial sensitivity. This exercise has, however, been completed in a selection of Welsh hospital pharmacies, with dispensing rates being benchmarked at an average of 9.8 items per person per hour.[49]

Reported dispensing rates in community pharmacies in the USA ranged from 8.9 to 18.0 prescription items per pharmacist per hour.[50] Both of these settings differ from UK community pharmacy, and such results are not directly transferable between different environments; more research into this is needed. Two studies identified considered pharmacists’ perceptions of their workload as opposed to measurement of actual workload; there is evidence to suggest there may be a difference between the two.[39,43] There were no studies available that investigated in great detail how much time pharmacists spent on services other than dispensing (such as advanced services, enhanced services or increasingly complicated OTC medicine sales). Such information would prove useful to both policy makers and employers. Bond et al. allude to the average time spent per MUR (51 min).[43] This was useful but may also have changed as pharmacists have become more experienced at doing MURs. Savage gave an indication as to how much time pharmacists spent on OTC advice and prescription counselling.