The effect of clinical pharmacy services on family practice residents' attitudes: a nationwide study

A nationwide study investigated the attitudes of family practice residents toward: interdisciplinary health care teams in family practice; the clinical pharmacist as a member of the health care team; and the utility of clinical pharmacist involvement in private family practice offices. A random sample of 174 family practice residency programs was selected for study. First-year residents comprised the sample population. Based on the response of the directors, programs were assigned to experimental (programs offering clinical pharmacy services) or control (no clinical pharmacy services) groups. Completed attitudinal instruments were received from 158 resident respondents in the experimental group and 153 resident respondents from the control group. The reliability coefficient of the returned questionnaires was 0.901 by the split-halves method. Residents in the experimental group had significantly more favorable attitudes than those residents in the control group on several scales. These scales included the clinical pharmacist's participation on the health care team, utility of a clinical pharmacist in a private practice setting, desirability of hiring a clinical pharmacist, and the desirability of practicing with a multidisciplinary health care team. These results support the hypothesis that exposure to clinical pharmacy services can significantly affect physician resident's attitudes toward clinical pharmacy.