A pharmacy in change : a study on the pharmaceutical profession in a competitive market

The Swedish pharmacy market has been state regulated for many years. In early 21st century, the Swedish government made a proposal to deregulate the pharmacy market in order to make a reform that would make privatization of pharmacies a possibility. The reason behind this change of the pharmacy market from state perspective was to create better service for the public. The Swedish government hoped that the change would result in increasing service selection, increased accessibility and a lower cost of non-prescription and prescription medicine. Private operators need approval from the Swedish Health Department before they can pursue their own establishment. When deregulation was finalized, many private operators opened privately owned pharmacies. The purpose of this study is to create insight on how the organizational change has evolved since the deregulation of the pharmacy market. It is also important to find out how the organizational change of the pharmacy market has affected the framework of pharmacists as an occupation. The perception of Pharmacist’ labour and changes on the profession as a whole is also studied. The study has been conducted using qualitative method to collect empirical data. Interviews have been made by conducting structured interviews with six local pharmacists. The empirical data has been analyzed by using the theory of professions. The theories of profession is used to explain pharmacists as a professions. In addition to organizational change, the study reviews pharmacist perspective, interpretation and valuation of their everyday life on the work arena. The pharmacists reveal several changes in their work life. Today they have bigger opportunities to choose employer, where before it was only one, today there are a lot of private pharmacies. That means they also can decide working hours because all the pharmacies have different working hours. Their perspectives are formulated in ways that show new routines and way of work. Due to the free market and competition between pharmacies, focus has shifted towards increased sale perspective. Pharmacist acknowledge that even though they are a profession, they feel that they have a higher workload, often less time with clients and sense of being a sales person.