The role of taking a holiday on South African pharmacists' overall well–being

Abstract

Literature indicates that pharmacists of South Africa experience high levels of stress as a result of their working conditions. Seeing that the definition of subjective well–being (SWB) entails that a person feels positive affect (positive moods) and experience infrequent feelings of negative affect (such as stress), pharmacists have low SWB since they experience high levels of stress. It is thus vital to lessen the stress seeing as this low SWB may entail a danger to the profession as well as the patients' safety. Based on this leisure proves to enhance well–being by producing positive affect (such as happiness) and reducing negative affect (such as stress or depression). Leisure (taking a holiday) is furthermore a means of buffering stress and therefore the perfect solution to pharmacists' stress. Hence the purpose of this research was to determine the role of holiday taking on South African pharmacists' overall well–being. To achieve this goal a database was obtained from The South African Pharmacy Council. This database consisted out of 8000 e–mail addresses of pharmacists registered at the Pharmacy Council. From the 1500 e–mails that were send out 207 completed questionnaires were obtained. A thorough literature analysis on socio–demographic characteristics, travel motives, independent choices and preferred activities when taking a holiday was done in Chapter 2. This chapter gives a detailed understanding of how the afore–mentioned factors influence the decision to take a holiday and the effect of taking a holiday on subjective well–being. Article 1 (Chapter 3) and Article 2 (Chapter 4) was based on this chapter's literature. Chapter 3 (Article 1) of this study determined whether holidays lead to positive SWB of pharmacists. In order to achieve this aim, the chapter made use of the Affectomer 2 and Satisfaction with life Scale to determine the pharmacists' subjective well–being before and after taking a holiday. Dependent t–tests were then applied to compare the A distinction on the other hand can be made amongst pharmacists that imply different working conditions and working hours. Therefore Chapter 4 (Article 2) of this study determined all the factors that influence the different groups of pharmacists' holiday taking which ultimately could lead to the enhancement of the profession's well–being. To achieve this, the chapter made use of factor analysis, ANOVAs and chi–square tests to find differences between different pharmacists. The results showed that the three groups of pharmacists (private, government, and industry), differ based on sociodemographic characteristics. These socio–demographic characteristics furthermore influence the different groups of pharmacists' decisions to take holidays which leads to higher subjective well–being. The results of Chapters 3 and 4 indicate that pharmacists experience enhanced well-being after taking a holiday and which have implications for different role players. This study is the first to determine the profile of pharmacists and give an indication of their travel behaviour that will assist destinations to alter their product/services to better suit the profile or travel behaviour of pharmacists. Employing companies on the other hand can have financial benefits in the form of low staff turnover and satisfied patients. Although pharmacists are seen as a homogeneous group, pharmacists differ based on socio–demographic characteristics and therefore the Pharmacy Council may enforce the design of different policies for the different groups of pharmacists to reduce the pharmaceutical profession's stress.