The American Pharmacists Association (APhA) and the National Alliance of State Pharmacy Associations (NASPA) have released the ninth installment of the Pharmacy Workplace and Well-being Reporting (PWWR) trends and learnings report series.
Launched in October 2021, PWWR serves as a safe space to submit both positive and negative pharmacy workplace experiences in a confidential and anonymous manner. The goal of PWWR is to tell the stories of those who submit their experiences so that the profession may begin to act on the findings and learnings. This report covers the first quarter of 2024.
To date, more than 2,100 reports have been submitted to PWWR from pharmacy supervisors to pharmacy support personnel in nearly every state, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. The learnings from all PWWR report analyses provide a roadmap for pharmacy personnel, employers, and the profession at large to address patient/consumer/co-worker harassment concerns, out of sync metrics and staffing, and barriers to staff–management communication.
“This cycle’s findings are similar to the reported experiences with the previous eight cycles,” said Brigid K. Groves, PharmD, MS, APhA vice president, professional affairs. “Reports this cycle included a new theme of outdated software and broken hardware computer systems in the pharmacy that have led to near miss errors, which are those that were corrected prior to reaching the patient. This learning is a call for a systematic review of all pharmacy prescription processing software and hardware to address and resolve needed updates and replacements.”