The relationship between skill utilization, professional orientation and job satisfaction for pharmacists

Technological changes in the manufacture of drugs have caused community pharmacists to lose control over the use of their specialized knowledge. The study described here sought to examine the consequences of these structural changes for pharmacists' perceptions of their skill utilization, job influence and job satisfaction. It was predicted that the job satisfaction‐job attribute relationship for pharmacists would be moderated by their professional orientation—the degree to which they wanted to use their specialized skills and have influence over drug distribution. This prediction was tested with a sample of 396 South Australian pharmacists using hierarchical multiple regression. It was found that community, but not hospital, pharmacists had significantly lower levels of skill utilization and job satisfaction than that found for other professional occupations. Professional role orientation was not a significant moderator of the relationship between skill utilization, job influence and job satisfaction. Skill utilization was the major predictor of job satisfaction and accounted for up to 32 per cent of unique variance in job satisfaction.