Job stress: Its relationship to hospital pharmacists' insomnia and work outcomes

Background: Research must examine the nature of the work environment in order to achieve insight into the causes and effects of factors relevant to reducing job-related stress and improving the quality of work. Purpose: This study aims to describe the job stressors of hospital pharmacists and to explore their effects on hospital pharmacists' insomnia and work-related outcomes. Method: The study employed a cross-sectional, mailed survey. Structured questionnaires were distributed by postal mail to hospital pharmacists between February and April 2005. The individual hospital pharmacist is the unit of analysis. Descriptive analyses and structural equation modeling were performed on the survey responses from the 247 hospital pharmacists who responded. Results: The top ten stress burdens occur in the areas of dispensing, pharmacy management, and hospital rules. The study findings confirmed the proposed hypotheses: that a hospital pharmacist's job stressors are related to his or her insomnia, intention to reduce working hours, intention to change job content, and intention to quit employment. The study also found associations between hospital pharmacists' social supports, gender, age, and monthly income and their insomnia and work outcomes. Conclusion: Hygienic job stressors based on Herzberg's two- factor motivation theory were examined in this study. These stressors were verified to be related to hospital pharmacists' insomnia and work outcomes. Hospital administrators could consider ways to improve the influences on hospital pharmacists' health.