Factors influencing pharmacists' over-the-counter drug recommendations

Self-care is a growing trend all over the world, and pharmacists have a major role in it since they are the most easily accessible medical experts.

Our aim was to investigate factors influencing pharmacists' over-the-counter (OTC) drugs recommendations in Croatia.

A random sample of 565 (50%) of all pharmacies in Croatia.

A cross-sectional study with a five-point Likert scale online questionnaire covering medical and non-medical factors influencing OTC drug recommendation was distributed in October 2017 to a random sample of pharmacies.

206/565 (response rate 36.5%) responses were collected. The most important factors influencing pharmacists' recommendation were: composition of the OTC product and its active component (4.76±0.47), scientific evidence of effectiveness (4.54±0.60), feedback from the patients (4.32±0.61) and information from professional journals (4.22±0.67). On average, medical factors had greater importance (4.5±0.58) for pharmacists' OTC recommendation than marketing (3.18±0.84) and social factors (3.15±0.79). Female pharmacists appeared less inclined to recommend an OTC product based on advice of other pharmacists (OR=0.61, CI=0.43 to 0.86, p=0.005) and pharmacists working directly in a pharmacy attached more importance to active components of OTC products during their OTC product counselling (OR=2.28, CI=0.92 to 5.65, p=0.03).

It is vital to know that pharmacists' OTC recommendations are mainly influenced by medical factors and to a lesser degree by marketing and social factors.