Pharmacist staffing challenges: how hospitals and clinics can overcome talent shortages

The healthcare sector is facing staffing challenges, especially in the pharmacy sector in recent times. Pharmacist staffing challenges are growing rapidly. The pharmacist workforce affects hospitals and clinics significantly. This creates tremendous pressure and makes it difficult to provide safe, timely, and effective patient care. When staffing is limited, it can lead to challenges with prescription turnaround times, patient safety and care, employee morale in the workforce, and increased operating costs.

All of this is compounded by increasing demand for clinical pharmacy services, and a decrease in pharmacy school enrollment has only made this worse, as the number of qualified pharmacists continues to decrease. In order to be effective and maintain merit, health care leaders must consider strategies to attract and retain this talent in a sustainable way. This blog will analyse the challenges pharmacists are facing in today’s market and provide recommendations for establishing a sustainable workforce while addressing pharmacist staffing challenges.

Identifying the issues facing the pharmacy workforce shortage

The workforce shortage in pharmacies is currently fundamentally tied to many factors that collaborate across education, workload, and remuneration. Firstly, as pharmacy school applications decline and fewer pharmacists are entering the workforce, this establishes a long-term shortage in workflows. With that being said, however, several post-pandemic demands have increased pressures on the workforce and workload.

This has led to increased pharmacist burnout and pharmacist turnover. Organizational pressures will continue to restrict health care facilities’ ability to provide attractive packages for pharmacist candidates. These challenges make it harder to hire pharmacists. At the same time, facilities also face difficulties when they need to hire pharmacy technicians. Closing these gaps and building upon sustainable workforce pipelines will require proactive pharmacist recruitment strategies to overcome pharmacist staffing challenges.

Operational effects due to pharmacist staffing challenges

When a shortage of pharmacists goes unaddressed, hospitals and clinics experience downstream impacts to their operations; wait times for prescriptions increase, patients experience limited opportunities to access pharmacy services, and medications prescribed are occasionally dispensed later than expected due to pharmacist staffing. The remaining staff are subjected to workload increase, which contributes to increasing hospital pharmacist burnout, which contributes to unplanned turnover.

These stresses are all detrimental to morale, and it is essential to acknowledge that access to medication is a direct driver of patient satisfaction and outcomes, and waiting for medication plays an important role in trust. Sustained gaps in pharmacist staffing can also impact compliance standards as well as the reputation of the facility.

Strategies for pharmacist recruitment and retention strategies

Recruitment of pharmacists will be impacted by implementing strategies to draw new talent, but also designed to prevent existing employees from leaving. Differentiating hospitals and clinics relies on employer branding, wages, and explaining growth opportunities within their organization. Advancement pathways appeal to new hires and offer a long-term engagement plan for existing staff.

Also, strong pharmacist retention strategies include scheduling flexibility, wellness initiatives, and recognition initiatives. These are strategies that can mitigate stress and further engagement while also increasing pharmacist satisfaction. Collectively, these initiatives provide a foundation to support staff retention amidst the shortages of pharmacists.

Examples include:

• Providing mentorship and training related to career advancement.
• Enrolling in leadership programs related to clinical pharmacy.
• Offering benefits that promote both financial and personal wellness.

Implementing technologies and pharmacy staffing solutions

New staffing platforms with technological solutions can help mitigate the impact of US pharmacy staffing issues while, most importantly, increasing practice efficiencies. Automation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are being utilized to improve routine pharmacist functions (e.g., dispensing, verifying), freeing up time for clinical and patient-facing roles.

Telepharmacy can facilitate service provision in rural, underserved regions, allowing clinics to fill the service gap without overextending the local team members. Other technology pertaining to workforce management software can also improve the scheduling process to minimize variability and overload, and to reduce the chances of pharmacists experiencing burnout. Facilities can use pharmacy staffing solutions to hire per diem, travel, or temporary pharmacists to meet demand variability and alleviate some of the staff shortages.

Establishing collaborative relationships and hospital pharmacist recruitment

The pharmacist shortage is not a short-term solution, but requires continued development of talent, and there is a difference. Hospitals and clinics can develop an internship and residency program by working in conjunction with pharmacy schools to establish direct recruitment pathways of qualified candidates to those schools. In addition, the established partnerships with pharmacy technician training programs and professional organizations will widen recruitment possibilities.

In addition, mentoring and training staff are crucial to maintain the team’s awareness of the evolving standards of care and compliance. Facilities can then implement education initiatives and coordinate with their hospital pharmacist recruitment to guarantee they receive their workforce today, while being ready for tomorrow’s needs. This is essential to overcome pharmacist staffing challenges.

Moving beyond traditional approaches to hiring pharmacists

Healthcare recruiters tackling continuous pharmacist staffing shortages often first utilize free job boards or collaborate with pharmacy schools for the applicant pipeline. While these two options could potentially provide assistance, they almost never provide efficacy or fill the immediate need. When things do not pan out, they often turn to staffing agencies or platforms. While using a staffing agency or platform can be a solution, it is vital that you are mindful of the decision.

Traditional staffing agencies can absolutely be a solution; however, some of these traditional agencies come with costs and issues, including significant markup, raising the cost of staffing, speed of response to hiring (slow hiring processes from a third party), and lack of transparency in the overall process, which creates uncertainty for employers.

Fortunately, technology is changing the landscape and how healthcare facilities hire. Modern, innovative staffing platforms, including MedSquirrels, will change the way you hire. This is a pharmacist staffing platform powered by AI that allows you to increase your speed to hire, decrease costs, and innovate processes.

Here are some of the ways we differentiate ourselves:

• No agency mark-ups, transparent pricing innovation.
• Through our AI-powered platform, we quickly match you with top healthcare talent across the nation.
• We provide fast onboarding to allow providers to start contracts without an extended waiting period.

By moving outside of traditional staffing approaches, organizations can help healthcare recruiters prevent pharmacist staffing challenges quickly and develop a dependable workforce into the future by utilizing a technology-driven platform like MedSquirrels.