Can Hobbies Help Pharmacists Combat the Burnout Epidemic?

Burnout has turned into a constant in the pharmacy profession. For pharmacists, the authors of a study published in US Pharmacist reported 61.2% of the profession experience a high level of burnout, which is a rate higher than surgeons, oncologists, and emergency-medicine practitioners.¹

The authors discuss the negative physical outcomes of burnout, which can include cardiovascular and mental health. For health care professionals, the impact has been especially profound.

When health care providers face burnout, it can also have a negative effect on the patient. The authors stated that burnout can decrease professionalism or even increase the frequency of medical errors. They stated, “This is particularly concerning when considering that medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the United States behind only cardiovascular disease and cancers.”

“As an owner and employer, there's a lot of people, not just my patients but my employees, looking to me and depending on me, and that's not taken lightly,” Leslie Herron, RPh, owner of Sumpter Pharmacy in Adel, Iowa, said. “Especially as an owner employer, you are never without stress.”

Pharmacy is in Herron’s DNA as a fourth-generation pharmacist. Despite this, her grandfather, who was also a pharmacist, tried to get her to think about another career path. However, when she was ready to graduate high school, she knew she wanted to be a pharmacist.

“I don't want to do anything else. I want to be a pharmacist,” she said. “He said, ‘well, good because I'm glad, but I just wanted you to be sure.’”

Herron practiced in a multitude of settings, but her family background has always been in independent community pharmacy. When it comes to burnout, she said that she always has some sort of anxiety and stress that she’s accustomed to because of how frequently she’s at the pharmacy. At this point, she wouldn’t know what to do without it, she said.

“I'm lucky to be able to do what I do. Everybody handles stress differently,” she said. “The key point is to be able to have a release.”

Although there are a variety of ways to reduce burnout, engaging in hobbies have been shown to promote mental health and well-being. Hobbies, according to an article published in Issues in Mental Health Nursing², “are characterised by the level of interest and enthusiasm they generate.”

The authors added that hobbies provide a sense of enjoyment and personal fulfillment while contributing to a person’s identity. For Herron, this love is of horses.

“My late husband introduced me to horses, and it was kind of funny because when he did, he was kind of getting out of it, and he had 1 pony left and a little bit of equipment,” she said. “Once I experienced that, he wasn't getting out of it anymore.”

She added that there was something magical about being around horses, and so they continued to grow that hobby. Her late husband became a professional trainer, and they became very involved in horse training at the national level.

Herron explained that she is very lucky because her day-to-day looks a bit different compared with what a general day in the stable is like.

“We're trying to sunset our careers, and although we'll never stop working, we're old enough to want to try to start enjoying more, and our stables has been a business for decades,” she said. “So, we are trying to kind of get that out from underneath us.”

She and her husband have a full-time trainer as well as 2 other members of the staff whose job is to take care of the barn and train the horses. Most people who care for livestock are up early in the morning, cleaning the stalls, getting the horses fed, and making sure there are no issues. Herron added that they also do the same in the evening. When Herron is in the barn, it is 100% for her own pleasure.

But being passionate about horses isn’t the only option for a hobby. Brent Rollins, PhD, RPh, professor of pharmacy administration and director of Pharma Career Pathways Program at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine School of Pharmacy in Georgia, has always had a passion for sports.

“The essence of everything that I do outside of this building… is sports-related,” Rollins said. “When you grow up the son of a coach…it's a part of everything that I've done and love.”

Rollins grew up in a small town in West Virginia when he fell in love with pharmacy. He eventually went to graduate school and got his doctorate in pharmacy, administration, and marketing. After that moment, he knew he wanted to go into academia.

“My parents are high school teachers, so teaching is kind of in my blood in a way,” he said.

During graduate school, he worked in the community pharmacy setting. By the time he started working in academia, he wanted to find something else to do outside of school.

“I saw an article written by Peter King in Sports Illustrated, and they talked about this company called Pro Football Focus, and that company was just hiring,” he said. “I actually went through an interview process there and got a part-time job on the weekends and sort of evenings, doing analysis for Pro Football Focus.”

He started working for Pro Football Focus in 2014 and worked on game analysis for both college football and the National Football League (NFL). Rollins said that led to covering more football, especially on social media. Now, he works on a podcast with David Pollack, a college football analyst and former NFL linebacker.

“The beautiful part about academia is it allows me the flexibility to do these things,” Rollins said. “I do prep work, and in the off seasons, we record once a week…During the season can be hectic because obviously the day job [is] taking up time, but we record anywhere from 3 to 4 days a week during the season.”

Both Rollins and Herron agreed that pharmacy is a rewarding profession, and they are both passionate about pharmacy. However, they also acknowledged that pharmacists are vulnerable to burnout.

“All practice environments are different, but when it comes to retail, certainly the chains in the [independents] are 2 totally different settings,” Herron said. “In the chains, the volume, the demands, the lack of allocated staff, and then what you do get is probably not the quality it needs to be to make up for what's lacking in terms of the burnout.”

She added that it might feel like the goals are unattainable, so the person might not feel satisfied when they return home. In independent pharmacy, she said the biggest source of burnout for her is not being able to care for patients like she needs to.

For Rollins, the burnout feels different.

“It’s yes with a caveat, and the caveat is, for me, if you stop remembering and the reason you do [this for], ‘Hey, I'm here to care for people,’ if you stop that part of it…and just sort of get in the monotony that you can get into,” Rollins said. “Burnout is an issue, but I've seen way too many people and way too many great pharmacists that never stop caring and never stop learning, and they still love their job.”

As for having a passion or a hobby outside of pharmacy, both agreed that it’s really about taking care of your mental health.

“If you can't take care of yourself, or you don't take care of yourself, you can't take care of others,” Herron said. She added that you don’t have to choose horses; even a 10-minute walk can be good for mental health.

As for feeling guilty, Rollins added that pharmacists need to stop thinking that way.

“We have the employee world, and then we have the owner/creator world. Pharmacy is one where you can blend those perfectly,” Rollins said. “Even for those that are working in a community pharmacy, if you have a hobby, talk about it, start a YouTube page…and just expand it because you never know where it's going to go.”

REFERENCES

1. Padgett EH, Grantner GR. Pharmacist burnout and stress. US Pharm. 2020:45(5)HS2-HS-10. https://www.uspharmacist.com/article/pharmacist-burnout-and-stress

2. Cleary M, Le Lagadec D, Thapa DK, Kornhaber R. Exploring the Impact of Hobbies on Mental Health and Well-Being: A Scoping Review. Issues Ment Health Nurs. 2025;46(8):804-814. doi:10.1080/01612840.2025.2512006