Pharmacy Technician Resilience Highly Associated With Workplace Characteristics

Organizational characteristics of the workplace were strongly associated with pharmacy technician resilience, representing an opportunity for the profession to improve resilience, according to findings presented in the Journal of the American Pharmacists Association.

Researchers conducted a cross-sectional survey study to “evaluate associations between resilience with various personal and work-related characteristics and conditions, including coworker support and pharmacist leadership behaviors.” Additionally, the authors assessed how technicians’ commitment to their organization related to workplace resilience.

The electronic survey was provided to a sample of 3000 certified pharmacy technicians, of whom 822 responded over the course of 6 weeks in spring of 2022. Implemented in the survey were the Brief Resilience Scale and an adapted version of the Multifactorial Leadership Questionnaire, as well as items to measure coworker support, workplace commitment, demographic information, practice site characteristics, and other factors that could impact resilience.

Responses indicated a relatively high level of resilience among technicians. Pharmacy transformative leadership behaviors and coworker support positively correlated with technician resilience. Future uncertainty negatively correlated with resilience.

Resilience was statistically higher among technicians who reported the highest level of commitment to their profession, findings showed.

However, researchers found very few relationships between technician resilience and personal characteristics like sex, age, race, and ethnicity.

“Immutable characteristics…played a very small role in describing resilience among pharmacy technicians,” authors concluded. “Instead, organizational characteristics of the workplace were shown to be highly associative with resilience of technicians, adding further evidence that organizations and the profession can help facilitate resilience among these important pharmacy support personnel.”

Reference:
Wasem V, Woodyard A, Desselle SP, Hosseini S, Hohmeier KC, McKeirnan KC. Correlations to and potential implications of resilience among certified pharmacy technicians. J Am Pharm Assoc. Published online August 30, 2022. doi:10.1016/j.japh.2022.08.023