(44) Evaluation of Demographic Influencers on Student Pharmacists’ Wellbeing

Objective : To determine if differences in student demographics influence wellbeing among first through third year student pharmacists.

Methods: An online survey instrument was developed and disseminated to assess wellbeing in first through third year student pharmacists. Items included the World Health Organization-5 Wellbeing Index (WHO-5, scored out of 25 points, 0 being the worst and 25 being best), which is comprised of five Likert-scale questions (0 being at no time to 5 being all the time) and additional domains based on student perceptions obtained from hosting four focus groups: demographics, work/life balance, and spirituality. Using IBM SPSS (Version #28), investigators performed descriptive statistics as well as Chi-Square analysis to determine if wellbeing score is influenced by demographics, work/life balance, and spirituality. The Likert scaled responses were categorized as low wellbeing responses (answers 0-2) versus high wellbeing responses (answers 3-5). The percent in each response category was compared to determine influencer status for demographic variables.

Results: 248 (63.6%) student pharmacists completed the survey. Participants were 64.8% female, 53.1% age 24-29, with approximately 60% of students either Caucasian or African American (equally divided between the two races). The WHO-5 survey responses revealed that age, race, commuter status, working status, and average number of work hour per week do not significantly influence level of wellbeing (p>0.05). In contrast, gender, religion, US residency status, living situation, and average hours of sleep per day were determined to significantly influence certain aspects of wellbeing (p < 0.05).

Conclusions: Select demographic variables may influence levels of stress and wellbeing in student pharmacists. Further evaluation is needed to design interventions to enhance wellbeing that are sensitive to the needs of students with different backgrounds, regardless of professional year.