THE COMFORT LEVEL OF PHARMACISTS WHO COUNSEL CONTRACEPTIVE PATIENTS

The purpose of this study was to examine a pharmacist's comfort level when she/he counsels patients receiving different types of contracepti ve. The pharmacist's counselling comfort is important because it could determine the initiation of patient contact and the quality of the co ntraception counselling. There has been little research done related t o the pharmacist's contraception counselling behaviour, and in this pa per several variables judged to be important in the counselling proces s were tested. The subjects used for this study were 128 pharmacists l icensed to practice in the state of Washington, and the data were coll ected using a mailed survey and later analysed using Pearson correlati on coefficients and regression analysis. Statistically significant dif ferences in counselling comfort were found related to age, professiona l responsibility, religiosity and contraceptive knowledge. Additionall y, it was found that one's sense of professional responsibility was re lated to religiosity, sex guilt, age and contraceptive knowledge. It i s suggested that as pharmacists begin to move more into the role of cl inical counsellor, they need to become more aware of their own attitud es and professional feelings about such topics.