The relationship between patient variables and frequency of pharmacist counseling

Over the past 20 years, much research has focused on evaluating pharmacists' performance as drug consultants to patients and on identifying factors that affect pharmacists' performance in this role. Little has been done, however, to assess the impact of patient characteristics, such as age, income, education, and drug expenditures, on pharmacists' performance as drug consultants. The purpose of this study was to examine this impact. Data were gathered via a mail survey of 300 households in Raleigh, NC. Multiple regression analysis was used to analyze the data. Results indicated that pharmacists generally are available to answer patients' drug-related questions, that pharmacists usually do not provide counseling to patients voluntarily, and that pharmacists are significantly more likely to counsel patients who have lower educational attainment and higher drug expenditures. These results appear to suggest that pharmacists have adopted the role of drug consultant to patients, but only to a limited extent.