Community Pharmacists’ Perceptions and Experiences towards Values, Ethics and Decisionmaking: A Qualitative Study

Background: In Community Pharmacy, prescriptions, medical devices and other over the counter products are dispended by community pharmacists. Ethical issues do exist while dispensing medications based on prescription and over the counter products. Objective: A qualitative study was conducted on community pharmacists to get their perceptions and experiences towards values, ethics and decision-making. Methods: Data were collected from the qualified community pharmacists through the focused group discussions. Twenty five community pharmacists were identified and invited. Eighteen of them accepted the invitation for the focused group discussion and gave their informed consent. General inductive approach was used to analyse the data. Results: The results suggested that community pharmacists are not much bothered about the patient’s health though some of the pharmacists take it as a significant factor in ethical decisionmaking. It is unsatisfactory to see that, community pharmacists are keen in physicians order or request than patient’s health interests. It is also not surprising that most of the community pharmacists work towards their sales target instead of working towards patients’ health care. It was good to know that the community pharmacists may give attention to certain factors while considering an ethical issue. Occasionally community pharmacists were ready to breach the rules for the patients’ interest, but in most cases they represented as per the rules and regulations even though it was not certainly in the best option for the patients/customers which is a key aspect in ethical decision-making. Conclusion: This study revealed that community pharmacists’ understanding of ethics, confidentiality, patient autonomy, trustworthiness and reliability may be the dynamics that affect community pharmacists’ values which may influence their decision making during ethical dilemmas.