• J O'Loughlin, P Masson, V Déry, and D Fagnan.
• Department of Public Health, Montreal General Hospital, 4835, rue Christophe Colomb, Montréal, Québec, H2J 3G8, Canada. JENNIOL@EPID.LAN.MCGILL.CA
• Prev Med. 1999 Mar 1; 28 (3): 324-31.

BackgroundRecently there has been increased interest in broadening the role of community pharmacists to include more health education and disease prevention activities such as patient counseling for risk management and interventions to improve compliance. However, to date, there is little information on interest in prevention among community pharmacists or on their current prevention practices.MethodData on current health education and disease prevention practices, as well as interest in expanding their role in prevention, were collected in a cross-sectional mail survey of a random representative sample of community pharmacists currently practicing in the province of Quebec.ResultsAmong 597 eligible subjects, 455 (76.2%) completed the questionnaire. Few pharmacists practice prevention routinely. Independent correlates of engaging in prevention included working in a smaller pharmacy (odds ratio (OR) 3. 2 (95% confidence interval 2.0-5.3)), owning the pharmacy (OR 1.9 (1. 2-3.0)), moderate/high job satisfaction (OR 2.1 (1.4-4.3)), and history of prevention activities in the pharmacy (OR 2.2 (1.4-3.6)). Over 90% of respondents reported that integrating prevention into their practices was important. Independent correlates of high perceived importance included working as a salaried pharmacist (OR 2. 3 (1.4-3.8)), high job satisfaction (OR 4.1 (1.7-9.7)), and currently practicing prevention (OR 2.0 (1.2-3.2)). The most important perceived barriers to integrating prevention included lack of time and lack of skills/instrumentation for practicing prevention.ConclusionsThere is considerable interest among community pharmacists in expanding their role to include more prevention, but there are many barriers to actualizing this role. Further work should focus on ways to overcome these barriers because pharmacists are particularly well-situated to make an important contribution to prevention.Copyright 1999 American Health Foundation and Academic Press.

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