THE IDENTIFICATION AND ASSESSMENT OF REALISTIC PHARMACY-SPECIFIC HEALTH PLANNING GOALS

Recent legislation may have presented the pharmacist with the opportunity to have a positive impact on the health planning system. Unfortunately, pharmacists do not appear to have taken advantage of that opportunity. Organized participation by pharmacists in health planning activities, with a few laudable exceptions, is rare. A result of this has been the omission of pharmacy services in health systems plans. In addition, there are indications of minimal pharmacist involvement in health systems agencies, and a lack of data necessary for planning pharmacy services. Reasons for pharmacy's inability to have an impact include: (1)health planning is not perceived to be an economic threat to the pharmacist; (2)there is a lack of a clearly defined public health role for pharmacists; and (3)there has been no organized approach for pharmacist involvement in health planning.;Data for meeting the objectives were collected, in part, by means of a Delphi technique. The Delphi is a systematic procedure for coming to a consensus. It is characterized by its anonymity, iterations with controlled feedback and statistical group responses. Additional data for the study were provided by a convenience sample of pharmacist-practitioners.;To meet Objective 1, pharmacist health planner experts generated fifty pharmacy-specific health planning goals which were closely related to the National Health Planning Goals of Public Law 93-641. The expert consensus determined that forty-seven were realistic goals. In addition, the overall consensus was strong (Objective 2). Consistantly high expert self-ratings substantiated this conclusion (Objective 3). The pharmacist-practitioners were given the opportunity to assess these goals. They found the same forty-seven goals to be realistic. A significant Spearman's Rank Correlation Coefficient (r(,s) = 0.845, p 0.001) indicated that both groups tended to rate the goals similarly (Objective 4). Thus both experts and pharmacist-practitioners had agreed upon a set of pharmacy-specific health planning goals considered to be realistic in terms of contemporary and future pharmacy practice. Other conclusions were: (1) pharmacist participation in health planning can be compatible with national health planning directions and (2)the Delphi method used in this study was compatible with the establishment of health planning goals.;The purpose of the study was to develop and assess a method which could enable pharmacists to participate realistically in health planning activities. It aimed to show how pharmacy might have a positive impact on health planning issues. The general objective of the study was to identify and assess realistic pharmacy-specific health planning goals closely related to the proposed National Health Planning Goals. These national goals reflect the assessed health needs of the country. The specific objectives of this study were: (1)Identify pharmacy-specific health planning goals which are closely related to the National Health Planning Goals of Public Law 93-641. (2)Assess, through a consensus of experts, which of these pharmacy-specific health planning goals are realistic. (3)Measure the reliability of a consensus reached in a Delphi methodology by determining expertise through self-rating. (4)Compare realistic assessment of pharmacy-specific health planning goals made by pharmacist-health planner experts and pharmacist-practitioners.