Attitudes of Pharmacists Toward Rx-to-OTC Switches and Their Effect on Pharmacists' Overall Judgment of Switch Appropriateness

The overall goal of the study was to assess pharmacists' attitudes toward Rx-to-OTC switches and to examine the role these attitudes play in pharmacists' overall judgment of appropriateness of switch candidates. Data were collected from a nationwide sample of 389 pharmacists using a mail questionnaire. Results indicated that although pharmacists favored Rx-to-OTC switching of drug products and concurred with the objectives behind the switch trend, they were concerned about consumers' ability to self-medicate. They perceived a high counseling need for switched products. Discriminant analysis was used to distinguish between pharmacists who approved and pharmacists who disapproved of OTC status for three potential switch candidates. The discriminant function developed by entering attitudinal factor scores and demographic and practice- related variables classified more than 94% of the cases correctly.