Ethical issues in a drug information center

The frequency and nature of ethical issues faced by pharmacists have not been well documented. To address these issues a retrospective study of the potential ethical problems encountered by pharmacists in a drug information center was conducted. Of the 744 calls received over a 13-month period, 50 raised ethical issues. Consumer calls were more likely to raise ethical issues than were health-provider calls. The calls mainly fell into five categories: drug identification, assessment of a physician's recommendations for consumers, conflict between callers' needs and legal or public-health considerations, therapeutic issues in the pharmacist-patient relationship, and paternalistic treatment of "difficult" callers. These questions raised ethical issues related to confidentiality, truth telling, and pharmacists' societal obligations. Pharmacists may confront an increased number of ethical issues as more drug information centers provide consumer services. Although there is no empirical evidence regarding pharmacists' ability to deal with ethical issues, there are reasons to believe that training in medical ethics will better equip pharmacists to recognize, analyze, and resolve ethical dilemmas.