Pharmacy technicians’ attitudes about their roles in Iowa public safety

Abstract Objectives To describe and apply a model for combining self-assessed frequency and criticality for pharmacy technicians’ roles and to evaluate similarities and differences between attitudes toward public safety in various practice settings. Design Cross-sectional mail survey of randomly selected pharmacy technicians in one state. Setting Iowa in fall 2012. Participants 1,000 registered technicians. Intervention Mail survey with option for online completion. Main outcome measures Scored ratings related to perceptions of frequency and criticality of roles. Technicians rated role frequency on a scale from 1 (not responsible) to 6 (daily) and role criticality on a scale from 1 (no importance) to 4 (extremely important). A weighted relative importance score was ranked to show importance of the role considering frequency and criticality together. Results The response rate was 25.81%. Ratings for frequency were correlated to ratings for criticality for 22 of 23 roles. A Mann–Whitney U test found a difference between ambulatory technicians and hospital technicians. A visual matrix of a dual-scaled analysis showed both groups’ role ratings to be positively linearly related. Hospital technicians showed wider discrimination in their ratings for some roles than for others. Conclusion Perceived role frequency and criticality can be considered together to contextualize the practice environment. The data suggest a relationship between perceived frequency of role performed and perception of a role's criticality. The study found differences between how technicians from various practice settings perceive their roles.