Who’s happier, pharmacists in New Zealand or Canada? A new study has the answer

A new study compared pharmacists’ happiness with their work in New Zealand and Canada. They chose the comparison because pharmacists in the two countries have a similar scope of practice, and their governments fund them in a similar way. The study was published in Community-Based Pharmacy Practice Quality Improvement and Research on Jan. 23, 2023. It was run by researchers at the University of Otago in New Zealand, and the University of British Columbia, comparing answers from New Zealand with ones from a 2016 Canadian survey. It found that both Canadian and New Zealand pharmacists had high levels of reported dissatisfaction and psychological distress—but Canadians had more. Read: New program helps pharmacists own a stake in the business Both groups were equally unlikely to say they had time for breaks and lunch breaks, with just 40% of pharmacists in both countries saying they had enough time. In addition, 45% of Canadian pharmacists said they had enough time to do their job, while 51% of New Zealand staff did. But 57% of New Zealand pharmacists said their work environment was “conducive to safe and effective primary care,” while only 47% of Canadian pharmacists were. At the same time, 45% of New Zealand pharmacists said they had enough staff, and 32% of Canadian pharmacists did. The Canadian side of the research found that pharmacists who weren’t satisfied with their work environments were more likely to be “working in chain pharmacies, submerged by high prescription volume, and imposed by clinical service quotas for reimbursable tasks.” Those issues also made pharmacists more likely to feel that they had unsafe working conditions and that they offered worse patient care. Read: Majority of pharmacists concerned about inflation and labour issues Pharmacists in both countries were more likely to report poor job satisfaction if they worked longer hours and if they processed higher numbers of prescriptions per day. That matches pharmacists' experience in other countries, the study said, as research in the U.S. and the U.K. have also found that increased prescription volume and workload were connected to an increase in work-related pressure, leading to lower job satisfaction. And even though they fared better than their Canadian counterparts, the study concluded that psychological distress in New Zealand pharmacists was “high” and had been for several decades. Read: Patients in control spark new roles for pharmacists

Who’s happier, pharmacists in New Zealand or Canada? A new study has the answer

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