RESUMEN
Objective:To explore the personnel arrangement in the outpatient pharmacy by calculating working hour to provide ref-erence for the rational staffing in hospital. Methods:The daily work content and working hour of 18 pharmacists in the outpatient phar-macy of a large general hospital from January to March in 2013 were following-up observed and recorded using the working hour meas-urement. The data were input the EXcellsoftware to establish the database, and the workload in various positions was collected and sorted. The obtained relative parameters were used to calculate the needed worker number on the basis of manpower planning model. Results:The research confirmed the mean operation time for 9 work programs in the outpatient pharmacy, and the time for drug dispen-sing and distributing was detailed. The needed number of pharmacists was 13. 29 according to the calculation, plus the officer-in-charge and sanitation workers, the total number was 15. 29(approx. 16). Conclusion:The working hour measurement can scientifically de-termine the time for each job, and the workload should be used as the foundation for configuring personnel qualification and the number in outpatient pharmacy.