Pharmacists' perspective on providing care when patients engage in unhealthy behaviors

OBJECTIVE To assess the association between unhealthy lifestyle-related behaviors in patients and the pharmacist's professional obligation for providing care. DESIGN Repeated measures ANOVA was used to examine the effect of severity of lifestyle disease on professional obligation. SETTING Four live continuing education programs on law and management conducted in the state of Florida. PARTICIPANTS 488 Florida pharmacists were surveyed with 65% completing the survey. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Pharmacists' opinions based on lifestyle-related diseases classified as follows: low lifestyle-related disease (low LD): nonsmoker with asthma who is adherent with asthma medications; moderate (mod) LD: nonsmoker with asthma who is nonadherent with asthma medications; high LD: smoker with asthma who is adherent with asthma medications. RESULTS The difference between the scales for measuring professional obligation for low and mod LD was significant, with pharmacists reporting greater professional obligation for low versus mod LD. The difference between professional obligation for low and high LD was significant, with pharmacists reporting greater professional obligation for low than high LD. The difference between professional obligation for mod and high LD was significant, with pharmacists reporting a higher professional obligation for mod than high LD. CONCLUSION The differences in professional obligation between the three patient scenarios were small but statistically significant. The findings suggest that certain patient behaviors, such as smoking or medication nonadherence, can have a negative effect on pharmacists' sense of professional obligation to the patient.