Eritrean pharmacists’ job satisfaction and their attitude to re-professionalize pharmacy in to pharmaceutical care

Objective Job satisfaction is a very important contributing factor for a person’s productivity and motivation. Naturally, if people are not satisfied with what they practice, they will probably need to change or reshape their way of practice at a certain period in time. Pharmacists are not exception to this principle and have been observed to re-professionalize pharmacy in to clinical and/or pharmaceutical care in many parts of the world. Thus, this survey aims to investigate the Eritrean pharmacists’ current level of job satisfaction and their views on re-professionalization of pharmacy. Method A cross-sectional survey was conducted among all Eritrean pharmacists who reside inside Eritrea. Main outcome measures Opinion of pharmacists about job satisfaction and re-professionalization of pharmacy into pharmaceutical care. Results Out of the 95 questionnaires distributed 86 were completed and returned giving a response rate of 90.5 %. Nearly three fourth of the respondents (71 %) have chosen pharmacy as their ever profession and they want to encourage their children or their close relatives to pursue it as a career. Sixty four percent of the pharmacists are either partially or fully unsatisfied to spend the remainder of their working life in a job like their current one and this has a strong statistical association with less years of experience (p = 0.007) and place of work of the younger pharmacists (p = 0.008). Majority of the study participants (86 %) believe there is a great mismatch between pharmacists’ level of education and level of practice in the work area. This was significant with lower age (p = 0.002), less years of experience (p = 0.006) and later year of admission to university (p = 0.000). Ninety five percent of the pharmacists perceive that the current role of the Eritrean pharmacists needs to be redefined and re-oriented. Conclusion Although the Eritrean pharmacists are proud to be pharmacy professionals, they want to redefine and reorient their current role into pharmaceutical care.