Changing pharmacists' practice pattern: Pharmacists' implementation of pharmaceutical care factors

The limited success of past attempts to influence pharmacists' consultation activities is evidence in the difficulty in changing pharmacists' practice pattern. Based on a theoretical framework, the Pharmacists' Implementation of Pharmaceutical Care (PIPC) model, pharmacists' behavior relative to the implementation of pharmaceutical care is influenced by the following factors - past behavior recency, behavioral intention, perceived behavioral control, attitude, social norm and psychological appraisal processes. Empirical data on the PIPC factors are presented in this paper. Data were collected from 617 community pharmacists in Florida (USA), and analyzed using descriptive analyses. Although community pharmacists have high behavioral intention to provide pharmaceutical care, they report low provision of pharmaceutical care at their pharmacies. Study results suggest that the discrepancy between behavioral intention and actual behavior may be due to (i) low perceived social norm by physicians, (ii) low perceived behavioral control, (iii) low self-efficacies with respect to the means involved in the provision of pharmaceutical care and (iv) low affect toward the means involved in the provision of pharmaceutical care. The PIPC model could be used to design successful intervention procedures for implementation of pharmaceutical care.