Beliefs about medicines among prospective and current pharmacy personnel

• Background According to earlier reports only 50 % of all patients are adherent to their medications. Increased adherence to medicines can reduce costs for society due to less hospitalization and sick leave (1). Beliefs about medicines are linked to adherence (2). Improved knowledge about beliefs may lead to new interventions aiming to capture misunderstandings, improve patients’ knowledge about medicines and thereby enhance their adherence. Objective To analyse beliefs about medicines among Swedish university students and pharmacy personnel. Method Beliefs about medicines questionnaire (BMQ) was used in two studies to analyze prospective and current pharmacy personnel in the autumn 2003. One study included first year students at Göteborg University (n=455); students in pharmacy, pharmaceutical bioscience, dispensing pharmacy, medicine, nursing and finance/accounting. The other study examined pharmacists, dispensing pharmacists and pharmacy technicians at 24 community pharmacies in Göteborg (n=306). BMQ is divided in a specific- and a general part. The general part was used here and measured beliefs in medicines’ harmful effects (General-Harm), beliefs in doctors’ over-prescribing (General-Overuse) and beliefs in medicines’ beneficial effects (General-Benefit) (3). Results A majority of the students were women and younger than 25 years. For all courses, the mean was over 4.0 for General-Benefit and below 2.5 for General-Harm. Pharmacy students had a significantly higher General-Overuse than students in medicine, dispensing pharmacy and finance/accounting. Over half of the pharmacy personnel were 45 years or older, had worked in a pharmacy at least 20 years and were dispensing pharmacists, respectively. As a whole, pharmacy personnel had means over 4.0 for General-Benefit and below 2.0 for General-Harm. Those who had worked in a pharmacy for 20-24 and 30-34 years had significantly lower mean for General-Harm than those who had worked for 0-4 years. Prospective and current dispensing pharmacists had the highest mean for General-Benefit and the lowest mean for General-Harm. Discussion Prospective and current pharmacy personnel saw medicines as beneficial rather than harmful. The study on pharmacy personnel showed that experience rather than education affected beliefs about medicines harmful effects. Students in medicine, nursing, pharmacy and dispensing pharmacy had similar beliefs about medicines. This may facilitate future team work as professionals, were they should be encouraged to discuss how to detect non-adherence, motivate patients in future treatments and how to use two-way communication with their patients. Pharmacy personnel have a positive view on medicines, and a study has shown that they dominate the communication at the counter (4). If pharmacy personnel assume that the client has the same beliefs about medicines as themselves, communication can be affected and questions important for the client might not be brought up. Conclusions Future and current pharmacy personnel considered medicines as beneficial and not very harmful. Future studies will answer if education can influence beliefs, and to what extent clients’ beliefs about medicines differ from those of the personnel.

Ämnesord

MEDICIN OCH HÄLSOVETENSKAP  -- Hälsovetenskap -- Folkhälsovetenskap, global hälsa, socialmedicin och epidemiologi (hsv//swe)

MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES  -- Health Sciences -- Public Health, Global Health, Social Medicine and Epidemiology (hsv//eng)

MEDICIN OCH HÄLSOVETENSKAP  -- Medicinska och farmaceutiska grundvetenskaper -- Samhällsfarmaci och klinisk farmaci (hsv//swe)

MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES  -- Basic Medicine -- Social and Clinical Pharmacy (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

beliefs about medicines; university students

pharmacy employees

Sweden

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)