The relationship between pharmacists' tenure in community setting and moral reasoning.

Abstract

To explore the relationship between pharmacists' tenure in the community setting and their moral reasoning abilities. Systematic random sample design. A large southeastern city in the United States. 450 independent and chain community pharmacists identified from the state board of pharmacy list of licensed community pharmacists. A mailed questionnaire that included a well-known moral reasoning instrument and collected demographic information. Moral Reasoning abilities and tenure of community pharmacists. As a group, community pharmacists with greater years of tenure in community practice scored significantly lower on moral reasoning than those pharmacists with fewer years of tenure (p=0.016). Four plausible explanations for the results are given including: a) a selection of lower ethical reasoners and/or an exodus of higher ethical reasoners from the community setting; b) a retrogression in the moral reasoning skills as community pharmacists obtain tenure in this setting; c) differences between the low and high moral reasoning groups may be due to a cohort effect; and d) the obtained practitioner sample may not have been representative of the population of community pharmacists.