Community pharmacists
Community pharmacists are essential due to their role in enhancing patient improvement through optimization of medicines. As a result, they help to minimize illegal use of medication and lowering the treatment costs. Additionally, they offer patient counseling services, which is essential when a patient is under treatment. Usually, patient counseling and training coincide with the dispensation of prescriptions, although the two functions can be provided separately. In Saudi Arabia, community pharmacy is a basic course in medical colleges, but it is marred by gender bias against females. The biases are mainly due to social, religious, and cultural factors. As a result, few ladies are willing to pursue this profession once they are done with school.
As a country, Saudi Arabia has gone through several social, political, and economic transformation over the last few decades. Much of the change has been in the medical field. There are different systematic reviews conducted across varies medical institutions. The following findings indicate that counseling conducted by pharmacists contribute to improved life standard, clinical outcomes, patient satisfaction, financial results, and disease and drug understanding among patients. Notably, in most of the trials, the counseling services were comprehensive and stretched beyond the dispensation period. Evidence suggests that during the dispensation of medication, the intervention of community pharmacists such as patient counseling promotes proper use of medicine and reduces drug-related complications.
Globally there is an increase in the demand for better healthcare, mainly due to high population size, people with several comorbidities and longer life expectancy. A closer analysis of the healthcare profile of Saudi Arabia indicates a population increase by close to forty-five percent over the last two decades. The findings also report a higher life expectancy of seventy-four years by 2016, which is four times higher than the worldwide average and six times greater than the regional mean. Injuries, non-communicable, as well as infectious diseases, are the significant contributors to the country’s disease burden. From these findings, there is an increased demand for medications and consequently accessible pharmacies. Since most people perceive pharmacists as the most convenient medical practitioners, there is an escalating demand for more pharmacists across the country. However, a close look at the pharmacy workforce is necessary to achieve gender equilibrium in the job market.
The distribution of both genders in the labor market indicates that female pharmacists constitute only twelve percent of the entire workforce. The population of females employed by the government is ten times higher than those working in the private sector. Thus few employment chances for ladies in the private sector contribute to the biased gender distribution in the country’s workforce. The institutions comprising the private sector include hospitals, community pharmacies, and polyclinics among others. Community pharmacies constitute seventy-five percent of all pharmacist opportunities in both the individual as well as the public sector of which females comprise only forty-one percent of all workforce.
Every year the Ministry of Health announces the available government job vacancies for all healthcare practitioners, including the community pharmacists. However, there has been a dramatic fluctuation in the employment opportunities in government health facilities in the last three years. Consequently, there is a decline in the rate of female employment with each passing year. On the contrary, there is an increase in the job rates for the males in the same period. Nonetheless, there is a drop in the overall job openings for both genders in recent years.
Due to such findings, female pharmacy graduates anticipate difficulties in the workforce, particularly in the community pharmaceutical field. Lack of job security, proper training as well as cultural and religious constraints influence the decision by female graduates to sign up with a specific pharmaceutical sector. As mentioned before, the unequal gender distribution is a primary concern in the pharmaceutical world, with females making up only four percent of the sum pharmacists in the private sector. Contrastingly, the average of females pursuing the pharmacy career stands at over fifty-six percent, which indicates that the professions continue to attract more. Globally there is a similar rising trend of more women joining the pharmacy profession. Overall, men tend to graduate at a faster rate than females, which partially explains the discrepancy between the two genders in the workforce.
However, unequal distribution in the labor force is not limited to Saudi Arabia alone. Studies indicate that limited female participation in the job market is rampant across all countries in the Middle East. For instance, while the employment rate was about twenty percent in 2012, female participation was nineteen percent, which was two-fold than that of men. Ironically, in various Middle Eastern countries, females graduate at a faster rate compared to men. However, fewer women get employment opportunities as their less competent male counterparts to get the jobs. Longstanding religious and cultural factors contribute the unequal female participation in the job market. In 2015, the literacy rate among ladies fifteen years old and above was ninety-one percent in Saudi Arabia, but as reported by the World Health Organization (WHO), their participation in the labor force was eighteen percent. The WHO proposed a need to create awareness on equal civil rights and gender equality across the entire healthcare system as a means to sustain the success achieved so far.
Various international bodies, such as SCFHS, provided further recommendations for the pharmaceutical sector. One such suggestion is to allow the hiring of female pharmacists in community pharmacies based in large malls or connected to private health facilities. However, that would contribute to a slight increase in job opportunities for female pharmacists. Restricting the community pharmacies locations would limit the employment opportunities for women since this is the largest pharmaceutical employment field in the medical field. Hence, there is a need to reconsider this proposal to cover every community pharmacy. Another feasible solution is increasing the nationalization of the private healthcare facilities by compelling them to employ a given percentage of Saudi nationals.
Although cultural as well as education barriers hinder the nationalization of the pharmacy workforce, recent changes in the sector present hope for a better future. The current economic vision will empower women through various government programs and enable them to take part in the workforce, particularly in the healthcare sector. The success of such initiatives relies on the availability of quantitative statistics characterizing the pharmacy labor force across the country. However, such figures are presently unavailable.
objective
The primary objective of this study was to describe current patterns of the perception by female pharmacy students and their willingness to work in community pharmacies. Also studied was the students’ expectations concerning challenges, job availability, salaries, and their comprehension of the long-term probability of working in the pharmaceutical field. The other objective of this analysis was to evaluate how female pharmacy students perceive their profession in the long-term as well as short-term.
Methods
The researchers conducted the survey on female pharmacy learners at the King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah. The study took place in January 2013. The researchers used different survey instruments which they distributed online via a survey monkey. The tool was fashioned to evaluate the female pharmacy student’s opinions concerning employment prospects in the pharmaceutical sector.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/hpm.2674
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330318094_Career_Choices_and_Preferences_of_Saudi_Pharmacy_Undergraduates_A_Cross_Sectional_Study