Investigation of Factors Affecting Ethical Decision-Making Process of Community Pharmacists in Professional Life

Abstract

Ethics is defined as questioning the practice of moral standards and whether moral standards are logical or not. The struggle to determine the rules that should be followed by those who demonstrate activities in a particular field and the ethical principles of practice that is specific to it reveal the concept of professional ethics. The principles of professional ethics, is very important for a profession, have become more attractive in the field of pharmacy as it is in every field. In this regard, pharmacists need to consider the professional ethical principles in relation to their patients, colleagues or other employees. This study aims to determine the perceptions of community pharmacists about professional ethics through a sample case can be encountered in a pharmacy. In this context, the prepared questionnaire, consists of 24 questions, was conducted to randomly select 150 community pharmacists face to face in Ankara. The obtained data were statistically analyzed via SPSS 18.0 package program. Firstly, descriptive statistical analyzes were performed and followed by exploratory factor analysis (EFA). As a result of EFA four factors are obtained as: "financial and legal pressure", "patient benefit", "colleague pressure", and "patient confidence". These factors explained 68.033% of the total variance. t-test and ANOVA were used to determine the effects of demographics of pharmacists on the factors. Obtained results are of great importance in determining the perceptions of pharmacists regarding professional ethics. Knowing the factors affecting the pharmacist's behavior in accordance with the professional ethics will shed light on community pharmacy practices.