Britt Terpstra, pharmacy assistant at Service Apotheek Vries, agrees. “I don’t experience it as stressful work myself. Patients want to receive their medication as quickly as possible and sometimes forget that it is not just taking a box from the cupboard, but that there is much more to it.”
According to Terpstra, this creates work pressure. “I do my work with attention and I don’t let myself be rushed. As a result, I experience little stress. But if you can’t handle this, the work can be stressful.”
According to figures, the profession of teacher in primary education is the most stressful after pharmacy assistant. “A frequently heard stress factor is the administrative burden after school,” says Stefan van der Worp of the Bijeen Foundation. “In addition, previously mainly subjects such as spelling and arithmetic were taught, but now citizenship and digital literacy must also be taught.”
Employees with stressful work say almost twice as often as the total number of employees that measures are needed to combat work pressure and work stress. “Every pharmacy assistant experiences stress sometimes,” says Bontekoning. “It’s how you deal with it that matters.”
To keep the stress level as low as possible, Bontekoning provides relaxation in the pharmacy in New Amsterdam. “Our employees regularly go for a walk or isolate themselves with a cup of coffee. After that time, the stress has subsided and they have enough energy to continue with their work.”
Due to staff shortages at Service Apotheek Vries, the pharmacy is closed for an hour in the afternoon. “We then work together for another half hour and then take a half-hour break together. This reduces the workload enormously,” Terpstra explains.
Van der Worp says that they use self-tests among the teachers. “This way we keep a close eye on how the teachers are doing and we can make adjustments where necessary to lighten the workload.”
According to Bontekoning, job satisfaction is paramount for pharmacy assistants. “If you have helped many people with their health and had good conversations with them, it gives you a good feeling. That feeling often exceeds the negative.”
Van der Worp believes that teaching primary education is the best profession in the world. “Teaching children is fantastic. Teachers matter and are very important for children’s development.”
Terpstra thinks that the work stress of pharmacy assistants in Drenthe will decrease in the future. “There are more and more collection safes where people can collect their medicines outside opening hours. Then we only have to help people who receive a certain medicine for the first time. All repeat prescriptions can be processed via the collection safe, and that saves us a lot of work.”
When it comes to primary school teachers, Van der Worp believes it is important to continue to focus on the work in front of the classroom. “Administrative work is part of it, but if the focus remains on teaching, the profession remains attractive to work in.”