Exploration of barriers affecting job satisfaction among community pharmacists

Background Understanding job satisfaction among community pharmacists is important as it may affect roles and performance. Several barriers in practice may affect job satisfaction. Objectives To explore barriers affecting job satisfaction among Indonesian community pharmacists. Methods This study reported data from the Nationwide Community Pharmacy Survey 2018. The results specific to participants in the East Java region were used for this study. Community pharmacists (507) participated in the survey between September 2018 and March 2019. The survey used questionnaire that asked 22 factors, which may act as barriers affecting job satisfaction. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Results The majority of respondents were female (83.43%), and most respondents were aged 31-40 years (41.63%). Most respondents perceived nine barriers such as lack of time for interaction and lack of recognition that were dominant affecting job satisfaction. On the other hand, respondents were not in major agreement perceiving the remaining barriers as dominant affecting job satisfaction. More than half of the respondents disagreed that the remaining barriers were significant affecting job satisfaction. Conclusions This study identified some significant barriers affecting job satisfaction among community pharmacists. In general, barriers can arise from individual, management, and environmental issues suggesting a specific approach to reduce these barriers.