Hospital pharmacy automation: collective mobility or collective control?

This study examines the relationship between new technology and pharmacy’s changing role in the division of labour in health care. Does automation advance pharmacy’s collective mobility project and transition to its new role as a clinical rather than a merely technical profession? Alternatively, does it threaten pharmacy’s cultural authority and control of medication dispensing? Does technology serve as an artifact demarcating occupational and gender boundaries in the drug distribution labour process? These issues were examined through qualitative case studies conducted at three hospital pharmacies located in mid-sized Canadian health care facilities. All three institutions had implemented automated drug distribution technology in the expectation that it would allow more pharmacist’s time to be shifted from dispensing-related to clinical activities. It was found that pharmacists had attempted to maintain control of their labour process and had resisted peripheralization from drug dispensing. Technological processes did serve as artifacts reinforcing occupational demarcations as well as professional solidarity vis a vis hospital administrators although its impact on gender boundaries was less evident.