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Sarah Caroline Willis, MA Econ, is
research fellow
Phillip Shann, MSc, is
research associate
Karen Hassell, PhD, is director
Centre for Pharmacy Workforce Studies at the University
of Manchester.
Correspondence to: Ms Willis at
Centre for Pharmacy Workforce Studies, School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical
Sciences,
The University
of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL
e-mail sarah.willis@manchester.ac.uk |
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As pharmacy changes, shifting away from a product-focus and towards
a patient-focus,1 the demographics of pharmacists is changing, too.2 Pharmacy
is moving away from being a predominantly male, white, profession working
in or owning small pharmacies, towards a younger, female workforce working
in a wider range of jobs.3 As a result of these changes, pharmacy and
pharmacists have a much more diverse identity.3
Future changes in pharmacy are likely to be affected by the demographics,
motivations, attitudes, values and expectations of those entering the
profession — pharmacy students.4 Starting with an understanding
of those entering the profession, our study aims to capture cross-sectional
and longitudinal data on a number of different topics relating to what
motivates students to choose to study pharmacy, their career expectations,
and whether these expectations are met in the early stages of their career.1,5
Tomorrow’s pharmacists
The cohort of 2006 pharmacy graduates studying at 14 schools of pharmacy
in Great Britain were surveyed in March 2005 when they were third-year
students. This survey had an explicit focus on choices made before
studying pharmacy, and for this reason was called “Early choices”.
It was designed to explore respondents’ occupational awareness,
ie, how their views of a career in pharmacy were informed and shaped.
Some of the contextual factors which we hypothesised might influence
occupational awareness and career choice included the roles played
by occupational inheritance, the influence of family members and gender
and ethnicity. The survey also collected data about respondents’ future
preregistration and work intentions, which future articles will discuss.
The following analysis is based on data from the “Early choices” survey
relating to the demographics and motivations of the cohort. Gender The overall response rate to the “Early choices” survey
was 67 per cent, and 71.5 per cent of those who completed it were female.
The high proportion of women responding to our survey indicates that
the trend reported by recent analysis of the 2005 Register of Pharmaceutical
Chemists6 of increasing numbers of women qualifying as pharmacists looks
set to continue.
Proportions of male and female respondents were found to vary by school
of pharmacy, with males comprising between 16.7 and 44.2 per cent of
respondents when analysed at school level.
Although the impact of feminisation on the pharmacy workforce is far
from clear, the question of why female students are choosing to study
pharmacy in increasing numbers also remains unanswered, as does the question
of whether it is also the case that males are purposefully avoiding studying
pharmacy.
Ethnicity The largest group of respondents, proportionally, were white
British (40.6 per cent), and the single largest ethnic minority group
were Indian British, representing 19.2 per cent of the cohort. This finding
demonstrates that the trend towards increased participation in pharmacy
by ethnic minority groups is also set to continue.
The growing representation of ethnic minority groups within pharmacy
is especially remarkable when viewed in relation to the population as
a whole, since the 2001 UK census data showed that the total ethnic minority
(non-white) population in England to be only 9.1 per cent.7 In part,
the growing numbers of ethnic minority groups either newly qualifying
as pharmacists or studying pharmacy, can be explained by differences
in the age profiles between different ethnic groups because, despite
representing a low overall proportion of the population, the 2001 UK
census demonstrates that ethnic minority groups tend to have a higher
proportion of younger people than the population as a whole.7
However, although the demographic characteristics of the cohort reflect
a wider growing ethnic diversification of the under 25 population, this
does not explain why the representation of white males is falling both
among those who have recently qualified as pharmacists,8 and within our
cohort,
where they comprise 9.2 per cent of respondents completing the “Early
choices” demographic question. This figure is particularly striking
when compared with the proportion of white females in the cohort (31.2
per cent).
The growing representation of ethnic minority groups among pharmacy students
has parallels with other research, which has consistently found that
applications and admissions to higher education from most ethnic minority
groups are proportionally higher than applications and admissions from
the rest of the population.9
In relation to the 2006 pharmacy graduate cohort, we found that the distribution
of ethnic minority groups across schools of pharmacy varied significantly
from 8.2 to 92.5 per cent of respondents (47.2 per cent of all respondents
were from ethnic minority groups). Ethnic minority students were under-represented
among students studying at schools of pharmacy in Scotland and Wales,
since 93.7 per cent of all ethnic minority students were studying at
schools of pharmacy in England.
Motivation We found across all groups of respondents that the strongest
motivator for choosing to study pharmacy was that it was a science-based
course. Choosing an undergraduate course on the basis of factors that
are not directly related to future career prospects has, once again as
reported elsewhere, been shown to be the main motivator behind choice
of undergraduate courses for students applying to study both vocational
and non-vocational degrees.10
Other motivators perceived as being most influential by the cohort indicate
that students were driven to study pharmacy by a combination of external
motivators, such as the reputation of the profession and financial reward,
as well as by intrinsic motivators, relating to personal qualities, experiences,
intentions and values such as wanting to help people.
Finally, we found that more ethnic minority males were influenced by
extrinsic factors such as pharmacy being a respected profession and because
of the opportunity to open a business. For ethnic minority females the
influence of the family was significant, with 7.7 per cent of them but
only 1.7 per cent of white females selecting this as the item most strongly
influencing their decision to study pharmacy.
These results suggest that the processes of career-deciding are socially
located and related to gender and ethnicity, and that career-deciding
strategies are complex, involving both advice from others and more pragmatic
factors such as future pay.
Practice implications
Clearly, the profile of tomorrow’s pharmacists will continue to
diversify, with the progressive entry of both female and ethnic minority
groups to the profession set to take place as the cohort enters pharmacy
practice. However, the potential effects of this diversification of the
workforce are difficult to determine. Since there is evidence that male
and female pharmacists follow different career paths and follow different
work patterns, further feminisation of the profession is certain to have
an impact on workforce supply. But if, for example, tomorrow’s
female pharmacists have similar employment patterns to those described
by Hassell11 then they are likely to work part-time once they reach their
30s, to be under-represented in hospital management, and to be concentrated
in temporary and flexible community pharmacy jobs. The implications,
then, if these gendered career paths and patterns of work are followed
by the 2006 cohort are of a perpetuation of pharmacy workforce shortages,
despite the increases in pharmacy student numbers.
With the strongest motivator being that pharmacy is a science-based course,
it appears that a large proportion of the cohort were not primarily motivated
to study pharmacy by future career prospects. Such lack of focus is not
necessarily a bad thing, since in a changing profession and pharmacy
labour market it is of benefit for graduates to be adaptive, to be adaptable,
and to have the potential to be open to new opportunities and ways of
working.10 On the other hand, if students are entering pharmacy because
they are attracted to the scientific basis of the course then the realities
of practising pharmacy, which requires both a pure science knowledge
and a social science understanding of the principles of patient-centred
care, may give rise to a mismatch between expectations of a career in
pharmacy and experience of professional practice. The message for those
responsible for recruiting, managing and retaining pharmacy students
and staff must be that it is important that students have realistic expectations
of what working as a pharmacist is like both before they enter pharmacy
school and before they enter the pharmacy workforce.
A further potential source of dissatisfaction with a career in pharmacy
may arise in relation to those members of the cohort who were primarily
motivated to study pharmacy because of the opportunity to open a pharmacy
business. With the decline in entrepreneurial pharmacy careers it is
possible that those respondents who studied pharmacy in order to become
a pharmacy owner may be prevented from putting their intentions into
practice, with the result that they will be unsatisfied with any alternative
pharmacy career pursued and hence they will be more likely to leave the
profession before retirement.
Future surveys in the longitudinal study will help us to understand workforce
diversification, in relation to when, how and whether some groups follow
different career paths, take career breaks, or have different working
patterns. Acknowledgments This study was commissioned and funded by the Pharmacy
Practice Research Trust, an independent research charity set up by the
Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain.
References
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7. Commission for Racial Equality. UK
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