Physician and pharmacist attitudes toward medication use

Pharmacist and physician attitudes toward the use of medication in various situations were compared. In May 1979, a questionnaire was sent to 300 pharmacists and 300 physicians randomly selected from practitioners licensed in Arizona. The questionnaire listed 25 statements regarding the use of medications in controversial situations; respondents were asked to rate their degree of agreement to each situation using a five-point scale. The data were factor analyzed, and a two-tailed Student's t test was used to test for significant differences between the mean physician and pharmacist response to each item (p≤0.05). Demographic data were also collected. The response rate was 69%, representing 217 pharmacists and 198 physicians. Pharmacists had significantly more favorable attitudes toward medication use in seven situations, and physicians in six. When the data were factor analyzed, neither the pharmacist nor the physician responses showed intercorrelations that justified data reduction. The respondents' attitudes were polarized, since more than 25% of the pharmacists agreed and disagreed in 15 situations. The pattern held in 13 situations for the physician sample. Both the pharmacists and physicians reported a wide range of unpatterned attitudes regarding medication use. Further work is needed to improve the instrument used to measure attitudes in this study.