Abstract

The primary goals of this study are to identify the underlying ethical dimensions of Pharmaceutical Care and to identify any differences with regard to these dimensions between pharmacists who have expressed a desire to practice Pharmaceutical Care and those pharmacists who have not. The two groups of pharmacists compared were chosen based upon their participation or non-participation in a larger Pharmaceutical Care demonstration project being conducted at the University of Minnesota. ;The ethical framework utilized to develop the survey instrument used in this study was created using literature from philosophy, bioethics, feminist ethics, and the health care fields. The survey results were then analyzed using factor analysis and MANOVA statistical techniques. Five strong, independent factors were obtained from the factor analysis. The items which loaded highly on these factors were concerned with the patient-pharmacist relationship, the responsibilities of pharmacists, access to health care, patient autonomy, and the utilization of patient-specific databases. MANOVA procedures performed on the composite scores calculated from the responses to the strongly-loading items resulted in the identification of three factors that pharmacists in the study group valued more highly than those in the comparison group. These factors include those that had to do with relationships, responsibility, and databases. A number of independent variables were also analyzed to identify possible confounders. The only independent variable measured in which there existed a significant difference between the categories within the variable was that of "Position". Through post-hoc comparisons it was discovered that staff pharmacists valued relationships and responsibility towards patients less so than pharmacy owners or managers