The Effect of Demographic and Social Factors on the Decision-Making of Community Pharmacists in Ethical Dilemmas

OBJECTIVE: The objective of the study is to investigate the effect of demographic and social factors on the decision-making of community pharmacists when confronted with ethical dilemmas during their professional practice. METHODS: This was a questionnaire-based, cross-sectional study. A total of 1057 community pharmacists were approached. The final participants were 742. Independent-sample t-test and one-way analysis of variance were used to analyze the factors (age, gender, work experience, education qualification, number of pharmacists per pharmacy, and pharmacy location). FINDINGS: Older pharmacists, experienced pharmacists, and urban pharmacists have less ethical dilemma compared to the younger pharmacists, less work experience pharmacists, and rural pharmacists, respectively. CONCLUSION: Individual factors such as age, gender, work experience, and educational level and organizational factors such as the number of pharmacists in a pharmacy and location of pharmacy may influence the ethical dilemma of community pharmacists.