Association between Performance of Patient-Centered Clinical Activities and Employee Engagement in Hospital Pharmacists

PURPOSE: The objective was to determine the association between the frequency in which a pharmacist performs patient-centered activities on employee engagement and perception of safety in frontline hospital pharmacists. METHODS: This multi-hospital, cross-sectional study was conducted utilizing a 30-item questionnaire that was emailed to hospital pharmacists in Southeast Texas through convenience sampling. Responses were analyzed using descriptive statistics. The Mann-Whitney U Test and Kruskal-Wallis Test were used to evaluate the impact of performance of patient-centered clinical activities on employee engagement and safety perception. RESULTS: The survey was sent to the 343 pharmacists within the health system and 111 useable responses were analyzed. There was a trend towards higher employee engagement scores as pharmacists performed more clinical activities. Patient counseling (p=0.036) and the average number of daily patient interactions (p=0.016) were positively associated with increased employee engagement. Employee engagement decreased when the percentage of day performing clinical activities increased to 61-80% or when the average number of patient interactions per day increased to 10 or more. There was a trend towards less perception of safety as the percentage of day performing clinical activities increased and the average number of daily patient interactions increased. When the percentage of day performing clinical activities increased to 81-100% and average number of patient interactions increased to 7-9, perception of safety decreased. CONCLUSION: Pharmacists who provide patient counseling and those who have more direct patient interactions have higher employee engagement than their counterparts. Performance of clinical activities did not change perception of safety overall. Employee engagement and perception of safety may be associated with workload. More studies are needed to explore what drives employee engagement and perception of safety with pharmacists.