BackgroundThere is a serious shortage of clinical pharmacists in Xinjiang, China. A six-month to one-year on-the-job training programme can rapidly transition nonclinical pharmacists into clinical pharmacists to resolve this issue. However, not all nonclinical pharmacists are willing to become clinical pharmacists, and many factors may influence their willingness. This study aims to assess the transformation intention of nonclinical hospital pharmacists and the contributing elements to make recommendations to accelerate the transformation of hospital pharmacists to clinical pharmacists.MethodsCross-sectional survey was conducted in secondary and tertiary hospitals in Xinjiang. Taking 14 prefectures in Xinjiang as a cluster, 34 hospitals were randomly selected. By snowball sampling, the heads of pharmaceutical departments introduced non-clinical pharmacists to participate in an anonymous questionnaire survey, which included 41 questions about basic demographic information, cognition and attitudes towards pharmaceutical care, potential factors and willingness to transform, and it took an average of 10 min to complete. Using multifactor logistic regression, the contributing elements of transformation intention were analysed.ResultsThe survey was conducted from May to October 2022. 338 valid responses were obtained, with a response rate of 91.85% and a willingness to transform rate of 81.67%. There were significant differences in the willingness to transform among nonclinical pharmacists of different ages (P< 0.05), marital statuses (P< 0.05), years of employment (P< 0.05), and technical titles (P< 0.05). There were significant differences between the two groups in the following four aspects: whether the setting of human resources in the pharmaceutical department was reasonable (P< 0.05), the educational level of clinical pharmacists (P< 0.05), the higher salary level of clinical pharmacists (P< 0.05), and whether they had experience in pharmaceutical care (P< 0.05). There was a significant difference in the total score of the pharmaceutical care attitude scale (P< 0.05) between the willing and unwilling groups. The results of multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed that the experience of providing pharmaceutical care (OR= 4.601, 95% CI: 1.13–18.69,P< 0.05) and attitude towards pharmaceutical care (OR= 3.302, 95% CI: 1.19–9.19,P< 0.05) had a statistically significant influence on the transformation intention of nonclinical pharmacists.ConclusionsOne-fifth of nonclinical pharmacists were unwilling to transition to clinical pharmacists. The attitude towards and experience of pharmaceutical care affected pharmacists’ transformation intention, so the suggestion is proposed to promote the transformation of nonclinical pharmacists into clinical pharmacists.