Development of a scale to measure pharmacists' self-efficacy in performing medication therapy management services

Measuring community pharmacists' self-efficacy in performing medication therapy management (MTM) services can be useful for tailoring interventions and predicting participation.

To identify relevant survey constructs related to the Wisconsin Pharmacy Quality Collaborative (WPQC) MTM program and to evaluate scale validity.

The 31-item MTM self-efficacy scale was developed using previous research, identifying critical program components, and beta testing. After administration to pharmacists in the 53 WPQC pilot sites, summary statistics and exploratory factor analysis (EFA) were conducted. Parallel analysis was used to determine the optimal number of factors. Internal consistency reliabilities were calculated.

Baseline participation rate was 94% (N=76). The 11-point scale (0-10) item means ranged from 2.83+/-3.05 to 7.82+/-2.19. Parallel analysis produced a 3-factor solution, accounting for 56% of the variance. Low-factor loadings or unacceptably high cross loadings resulted in 17-item deletions. The final EFA on the remaining 14 items retained the original 3-factor solution and increased the proportion of explained variance (72%). The factors relate to MTM tasks (alpha=0.92), personal interactions (alpha=0.86), and goal setting (alpha=0.84). Overall Cronbach's alpha=0.90.

Constructs for measuring self-efficacy were identified that may aid in future research predicting whether pharmacists engage in and persist in providing MTM services.