Community pharmacist.

Objective: To assess the influence of pharmacists ’ opinions on their dispensing medicines with a «medical prescription only» label without requiring a doctor’s prescription. Methods: We performed a cross-sectional study of 166 com-munity pharmacies in northwest Spain. The opinions of phar-macists on the following were collected as independent va-riables through personal interview: a) physicians ’ prescribing practices; b) the pharmacist’s qualifications to prescribe; c) the responsibility of the pharmacist regarding the dispensed drugs; d) the customer ’ qualifications for self-medication; and e) the pharmacist’s perception of his or her own work. The depen-dent variable was the pharmacist’s demand for a medical pres-cription for 5 drugs, which in Spain require a prescription. Mul-tiple linear regression models were constructed. Results: The response rate was 98.8%. A total of 65.9 % of pharmacists reported dispensing antibiotics without a pres-cription. This percentage was 83.5 % for nonsteroidal anti-in-flammatory drugs, 46.3 % for angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors, 13.4 % for benzodiazepines, and 84.8 % for oral con-traceptives. Further results showed that pharmacists with a heavier workload and those who underestimated the physi-cians ’ qualifications to prescribe but overestimated their own qualifications to prescribe less frequently demanded medical prescriptions. In contrast, pharmacists who stressed the im-portance of their duty in rationalizing the consumption of drugs more frequently demanded medical prescriptions. Conclusion: Our results suggest that to increase the quality of dispensing: a) the importance of the pharmacist’s duty in controlling drug consumption should be stressed; b) phar-macies ’ workload should be optimized; and c) perceptions of physicians ’ prescribing practices among pharmacists should be improved