Factors influencing behavioral intentions of graduating pharmacy students regarding interprofessional collaboration – a theory-driven qualitative study

BACKGROUND: Interprofessional collaboration enhances the use of competencies of different medical team members. Additionally, pharmacists’ involvement in patient care has been shown to improve their outcomes and seems particularly valuable in chronic diseases. Therefore, due to the aging of society and the increasing prevalence of chronic diseases, efforts are needed to involve pharmacists more broadly in patient care. However, there is a limited understanding of what factors could influence their willingness to participate in an interprofessional care team, especially among pharmacy students only entering the profession. This study aimed to fill these knowledge gaps by exploring graduating pharmacy students’ intentions in this regard guided by the theory of planned behavior. METHODS: We conducted seventeen semi-structured interviews with graduating pharmacy students of Poznan University of Medical Sciences, which were then thematically analyzed by two researchers. RESULTS: Positive attitudes of respondents, who mentioned the possibility of acquiring new knowledge, skills, and competencies, increased prestige and appreciation of the pharmacist’s profession, a better quality of patient care, and the support and relief offered to other team members as a result of collaboration, seem to strengthen their intentions. However, they also expressed their worries about potential errors and knowledge gaps, which constituted an example of some existing negative feelings. The identified sources of generally mixed social pressure toward the behavior included other pharmacists and pharmacy students, physicians, patients, their relatives and friends, and the decision and policymakers. Finally, their intentions may also be weakened by the mentioned perceived behavioral control aspects, like their level of pharmaceutical and clinical knowledge, skills, and experience, their knowledge of representatives of other professions and collaboration, the atmosphere at their future place of work, co-workers’ potential reluctance to collaborate with them, finding time for collaboration, the existence of incentives and gratification system, and existing legal regulations. CONCLUSIONS: The attitudes of graduating pharmacy students toward interprofessional collaboration seem mostly positive, but their intentions might be weakened by the mixed sense of social pressure and factors decreasing their perceived behavioral control. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12913-023-10224-0.