The influences of personality, social cognition, and environmental factors on pharmaceutical care

The purposes of this study were to: (1) investigate the effect of five dimensions of personality on pharmaceutical care; (2) test a theoretical model that integrates five dimensions of personality in the Five-Factor Model and social cognitive variables contained in the Theory of Planned Behavior to predict pharmaceutical care provision and pharmacists' intention to provide pharmaceutical care; and (3) examine the mediational path of behavioral intention that links the personality to behavior.; A cross-sectional mail survey of 600 randomly selected Iowa pharmacists was self-administered. The usable response rate of the survey was 60.14%. Ordinary least squares multiple regression was used as the method of analysis.; Openness was the only personality dimension that had a significantly positive relationship with pharmaceutical care when controlling for the practice environmental factors (beta = .127, p = 0.037). Extraversion shared a bivariate correlation with pharmaceutical care provision (r = 0.21, p < 0.01). The theoretical model indicated that: (1) agreeableness, attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control can serve as a framework for predicting pharmacists' intention to provide pharmaceutical care with R2 = 0.792 (p = .000); (2) Behavioral intention, perceived behavioral control, adequacy of resources and type of practice setting can serve as a framework for predicting pharmaceutical care with R2 = 0.47 (p = .000). The mediational role of behavioral intention between extraversion and pharmaceutical care provision was not met. However, the condition for mediational role of behavioral intention between openness and pharmaceutical care provision was met when not controlling for perceived behavioral control. In conclusion, this study demonstrated that the five factor model and the Theory of Planned Behavior can be used as a frame work for investigating the influences of personality and social cognitions on behavior. These results can be used to design interventions for implementation of pharmaceutical care.