Texas pharmacists showing the stress of heavy workloads and low pay.

By Marianna Souriall, msourial@ttu.edu

Burnout is a familiar feeling to many. 

A constant mental weight shown through reduced productivity, aches and an uncontrollable sense of exhaustion. 

For the pharmaceutical profession, it has manifested into record high turnover rates. 

Texas ranks 24th amongst all states for highest turnover rates in the pharmaceutical field, according to the Texas Board of Pharmacy. At its peak, Texas ranked 14th in 2020, citing COVID-19 as the primary reason. 

Clinical pharmacist Traci Thompson, with Covenant hospital, concurred with the data and said she watched many of her coworkers process the mental toll of the pandemic. 

“It got really hard during COVID, mainly because of the type of patients that we were seeing and the additional workload, the stress, the not knowing truly what we were doing, initially anyway, and all the extra restrictions and protection,” Thompson said. “It just added so much on to us, plus all the death was a lot more than what most people are used to seeing.”

COVID-19 forced individuals to leave the medical profession as many became ill or quit before they brought the virus back to their family. As the pandemic progressed, one in 10 health care workers considered leaving the profession, and more than half cited burnout as the cause, according to the Texas Hospital Association. 

Though what is happening in Texas seems to be a familiar problem across the nation. 

When evaluating turnover rates, 25 percent was considered an outlier in the years leading up to COVID-19. As of 2021, turnover rates sit between 21 and 30 percent, specifically in pharmacy technicians, according to the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists. 

While the pandemic may have started the resigning spiral, according to the Pharmacy Times, low pay and increased responsibilities have kept turnover rates at a steady pace for pharmacists and technicians. 

A pharmacist was traditionally responsible, in the years leading up to 2020, for packaging medication, answering customer questions and coordinating with insurance companies, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

But just as COVID-19 altered reality, according to the Pharmacy Times, it also shifted the role of pharmacists as they are now responsible for rapid point-of-care testing and administering vaccines in addition to their pre-existing duties. 

Thompson said not only is the physical task an extra responsibility, but people often negate the extra studying pharmacists have to go through to ensure patient safety when administering vaccines. 

“It's really making me have to relearn or learn for the first time, a lot of new things, or things that I may have learned in school that I haven't had to use, like vaccines, learning so much about vaccines, that I haven't touched in 20 years,” Thompson said.

The industry is slowly beginning to recover from turnover rates with a five percent increase in pharmacist employment, according to the Pharmacy Times. 

However, even with additional responsibilities, the pay has remained the same, and it is below the median annual wage for all workers at $36,840 per year as of 2021.

“With a retail setting, they (pharmacists) are being asked to do however many vaccines in a season, or year, whatever it is that their quota is, but they don't get any additional pay or assistance,” Thompson said

Two years later, pharmacists began organizing protests, specifically in chain corporations such as CVS and Walgreens. 

Prior to the walkouts, researchers believed it was the low compensation for increased workloads that led to the turnovers. 

However, lack of fulfillment within the job later became the widely accepted truth. 

Nonetheless, limited patient to physician care was only one reason as Thompson said for her, thoughts of leaving stem from feeling underappreciated. 

In a perfect world, Thompson said, she hopes management will trust pharmacists to do their job and acknowledge it is difficult to manage large workloads with so many constraints on the hours pharmacists can work. 

“We have a Doctorate degree, and sometimes we feel like we're treated like we're working at a McDonalds or something,” Thompson said. “We still clock in and out. It would be nice if we were salary and not given so many restrictions on clocking in and out, specifically for lunch or  certain times of the day, and not getting overtime.”