Understanding the Context of Pharmacy Practice Change: Gaining insight into the professional culture of pharmacy and pharmacists’ personality

• Author / Creator

  Rosenthal, Meagen Marie

• Background: Pharmacists around the world are being asked to adopt, and integrate, an increasing number of clinical services into their practices. Evidence for the efficacy of pharmacists’ interventions in patient care also continues to grow. Traditional approaches to understanding practice change have not fully accounted for the environmental context of pharmacy practice. Aim: The aim of this work was to begin this process of understanding the context of pharmacy practice by gaining insight into the professional culture of pharmacy within Canada. Objectives: Objective 1: To gain insight into Canadian pharmacy’s professional culture, using the organizational culture profile (OCP), and personality traits, using the big five inventory (BFI). Objective 2: Investigate possible relationships between pharmacists’ responses to the OCP and BFI and proxy measures of advanced practice. Objective 3: Using demographic data including pharmacy practice setting, pharmacist role, level of education and region of practice to investigate possible sub-group differences in responses provided on the OCP and BFI. Methods: A cross-sectional survey design was used in each of the 5 studies included in this work. Participants included Alberta hospital pharmacists (Chapter 2), pharmacists with Additional Prescribing Authority participating in a pharmacy practice research trial (Chapter 3), a national sample of hospital pharmacists (Chapter 4), Alberta pharmacists with Additional Prescribing Authority (Chapter 5), and British Columbia pharmacists (Chapter 6). With the exception of the second study (Chapter 3) all surveys were administered online. A variety of measures, in addition to the OCP and BFI, were collected some examples of included measures include: number of years in practice, level of education, number of patients recruited into a pharmacy practice trial, region of practice, integration of Additional prescribing Authority into practice, and number of prescription adaptations provided each month. The results from each study were first analysed using descriptive statistics, and then using ANOVA analyses, with post-hoc testing, or regression analyses, as appropriate. Conclusions: One OCP factor, competitiveness was consistently repeated across the studies. Results from the BFI also identified one trait, conscientiousness, repeated across each of the 5 studies. A number of significant relationships were observed between the adoption of advanced practice opportunities and the factors of the OCP and the traits of the BFI. Finally, a number of important possible sub-group differences were also identified. Taken together these findings provide insight into the context of pharmacy practice. This improved understanding of context can be used in the development of future knowledge translation intervention studies to advance pharmacists’ practice.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Knowledge translation
  • Pharmacy practice change
  • Professional culture
  • Personality traits

• Graduation date

  Fall 2014

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Doctor of Philosophy

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3V11VS5D

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.