OBJECTIVES Pharmacist's dissatisfaction with the work caused by inadequate job demands, working environments and administrative requirements might lead to poor performance, personnel's burnout and turnover rate. However, the issues have been scantly acknowledged. This study aimed to investigate the job satisfaction among hospital pharmacists in Taiwan. METHODS Semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine hospital pharmacists to explore the main concerns regarding job satisfaction of the hospital pharmacists. Subsquently content analysis was performed to produce a questionnaire with 24 items covering dispensing workload, salary, benefit packages, education, and training. After the reliability and validity of the questionnaire were tested, the revised questionnaire was distributed to all pharmacists in a medical center in Taipei. RESULTS In total, 66.36% of 110 pharmacists responded to the survey. Satisfaction scores ranged from 5 (extremely satisfied) to 1 (extremely dissatisfied). The participants in this study were most satisfied with the working relationships with colleagues, the leadership of the head of pharmacy department, and the competency for providing patient consultations. The participants were most dissatisfied with the heavy workload, night shifts, and the promotion system. The total mean satisfaction score was 3.17 +/- 0.74, slightly higher than the mean value, without significant difference among varied groups of age, gender, salary, education levels and working years. However, longer working years seemed to significantly relate to higher satisfaction level in salary. (F=3.17, P <0.01). CONCLUSIONS It is recommended that decision makers need to consider the salary and shift systems to improve job satisfaction of the pharmacists. Further survey is planned to distribute this questionnaire to a larger groups of pharmacists working in different levels of medical settings.