Abstract

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been many statistics about how essential workers have been affected. One group that is often left out of this conversation are pharmacy staff. Pharmacy staff are in vulnerable positions at their place of work as they must be in person at their jobs where they come into direct contact with patients, some of whom may be sick, as they distribute medications to patients. They have been at the forefront of the vaccination rollout, COVID testing, and now, booster shots. Despite the importance of their position, little COVID- related research focuses on pharmacists or how the pandemic has affected their overall sense of well-being. To examine this issue, seven pharmacy staff were interviewed who lived and worked in North Carolina about whether and how the pandemic working conditions altered participants' feelings of mental and physical well-being. The findings indicate that many pharmacy employees felt stressed and overwhelmed during the pandemic due to understaffing issues that resulted in participants feeling overworked and overextended. All seven participants also discussed feeling a dramatic decrease in their mental well-being since the beginning of the pandemic. Findings reveal changes to the well-being of pharmacy staff due to working in person throughout the pandemic. There was interest in whether their tasks have changed or become more stressful due to the additional burden of the pandemic. This is essential information to learn about pharmacy staff as they are struggling right now to complete their jobs as they did before the pandemic. If this continues, many people in this field could be affected long term from these overwhelming feelings of stress. The health effects that also could occur from constantly feeling overworked could be detrimental to the life of pharmacy staff6 . The inclusion of all pharmacy staff, rather than exclusively pharmacists, will help represent a population of people who are often left out of research when they are just as important as pharmacists during this time.

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