Understanding pharmacist success in practice: A scoping review

Abstract

Objectives: The objective was to identify literature providing a description of characteristics contributing to pharmacists' individual level success in providing advanced patient care.

Design: An interpretive scoping review was conducted to synthesize knowledge and address the study objective.

Setting: Searches were undertaken in Ovid MEDLINE (1946-2015), EMBASE (1974-2015), and International Pharmaceutical Abstracts (1970-2015).

Participants: Not applicable.

Main outcome measures: Specific keywords used in the search included: motivation, attitude, career, clinical competence, certification, pursuit of an expanded scope of practice, pharmacist, and success. This was not intended to be an exhaustive list, and every effort was made to be inclusive as the search revealed additional words and phrases of interest.

Results: A total of 93 articles were initially identified, 10 articles met inclusion criteria and were retained for full-text analysis. Most of the included articles were published in the United States (70%). One-third of the articles conducted semi-structured interviews, one-third of the articles were editorials or commentaries, and the remaining articles collected data using surveys, knowledge assessments, and observation. Content analysis of the extracted definitions of success yielded 2 themes; "what successful pharmacists do" and "what successful pharmacists should be."

Conclusion: Professional organizations representing pharmacy have made significant strides in advocating for pharmacists' provision of advanced patient care. If pharmacists are to successfully provide advanced patient care a more specific and practically-oriented understanding that accounts for individual and environmental factors of how to achieve individual-level success is needed.