Hundreds of Walgreens pharmacy staff have walked off the job this week in multiple states. The move is in protest of working conditions that employees say have made it difficult to do their job. 

Pharmacy workers say they’re facing staffing shortages that put patient safety at risk. That’s as job duties for pharmacy staff have increased, as well.

Pharmacists do a lot more than fill prescriptions these days: “Administering vaccines, providing more counseling, administering COVID tests,” said Robert Field, a professor of law and health management policy at Drexel University.

The responsibilities of pharmacists have only grown in recent years, he said.

“Pharmacy is reaching a point where the expanding role of pharmacists is coming into conflict with their ability to do the basic job,” said Field.

Plus, they don’t always get reimbursed for those extra services, said Anna Legreid Dopp with the American Society of Health System Pharmacists. “And the math just doesn’t work out if that’s the case.”

So it’s not surprising that a lot of retail pharmacy staff quit or retired in the wake of the pandemic, according to Joseph Carreno at the Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences.

Pharmacy school graduates also have a lot of other options now, he said — like working in hospitals, doctor’s offices or for drug companies.

“As students are becoming more aware of the variety of roles, it just becomes a larger competition for the limited number of graduates that we have every year,” Carreno said.

That means retail pharmacies need to make the job more enticing if they’re going to hire more staff to meet demand.