Taylor L Watterson, PharmD, PhD - US grants

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Medication safety is a critical public health issue. Community retail pharmacists are the last line of defense for assuring safe medication use in the outpatient setting. However, pharmacists are experiencing unsafe levels of stress and excessive demands within the workplace. Pharmacists are crucial resources for health information as the most accessible health care professional. Especially in rural communities with limited access to primary care providers, pharmacists are critical for the provision of quality care. Further, 72% of community pharmacists reported their workload levels as high or excessively high which negatively affected the quality of care they were able to provide to patients. This is consistent with the Quadruple Aim which states that supporting the well-being of the health care professional is a prerequisite to assuring safe and high-quality health care. Occupational fatigue is a characteristic of excessive workload that inhibits workers? abilities to function at normal capacity. Research in physicians and nurses has demonstrated that occupational fatigue negatively impacts patient, employee, and organizational outcomes. However, fatigue has been dangerously overlooked in pharmacists, who are experiencing excessive-work related demands. Systems based interventions to reduce fatigue must be developed to mitigate patient harm. A context-specific instrument needs to be validated first in order to develop and test interventions to reduce fatigue. This project will validate a previously developed pharmacist occupational fatigue instrument, utilizing the Instrument Development and Construct Validation framework. This explanatory mixed methods study has the following aims: (1) Examine convergent validity between two measures of occupational fatigue in pharmacists using a commercially available actigraphy device (Fatigue Science Readiband) and previously developed fatigue survey instrument, (2) Examine discriminant validity between a measure of occupational fatigue and a measure of burnout using a previously developed fatigue survey instrument and validated burnout index, and (3) Explore factors related to occupational fatigue in pharmacists. This study will be conducted by recruiting 60 community retail pharmacists across the state of Wisconsin. Pharmacists will wear the Fatigue Science Readiband, which will capture physiologic fatigue data continuously for 14-days. Participants will also be given the previously developed fatigue survey instrument, Maslach Burnout Inventory, and participate in a 30-minute interview after the 14-day data collection period. The ultimate goal of this project is to validate an instrument that will be utilized to develop and test interventions to reduce fatigue in community pharmacists, ultimately reducing patient harm. This project will be led by a pharmacist researcher uniquely trained in human factors engineering theories and methods. The study leverages a strong multidisciplinary team of mentors that include expertise in medication safety, community pharmacy, rural health, implementation science, and physical ergonomics.