Risk factors for stress and mental disorders in pharmacists and pharmacist aides

Abstract

Introduction: Mental disorders and work-related stress may result from situations related to the work process and its poor organization. Among the most affected by mental disorders are the professionals that integrate health services, including pharmacists and pharmacy assistants. The role of the pharmacist and the pharmaceutical care suffered major changes during the twentieth century and culminate in their current powers that, associated with the fact of being in the interface between the prescription and dispensing of medications, with a responsibility to reduce treatment risks and consequently involved in legal and medical/social issues, daily submit the professionals to stressor factors. Objective: To identify the most prevalent risk factors for stress and mental disorders related to work of pharmacist and pharmacist’ aides. Methodology: a literature review, using the keywords “Pharmacy / Pharmacist ‘Aides”, “Mental Disorders”, “Stress” and “Burnout” in the databases: PubMed, SciELO, BVS and Science Direct. Results / Discussion: There were twelve articles, with seven of them stress factors related to the profession and five specifically mental disorders. Among the first, six of them are international literature, and the only national paper is from Bastos et al. (2010), that expresses possible stressors using a series of interviews with community pharmacists in Rio de Janeiro. Mental disorders are covered only undergraduate students in pharmacy, as quoted by Hunt et al. (2013), which show cases of depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder related and sleep disorders and anhedonia. Conclusion: The most prevalent stressor factors found were: long work hours, frequent interruptions and insufficient number of workers.