title: The relationship between pharmacists' tenure in community setting and moral reasoning.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To explore the relationship between pharmacists' tenure in the community setting and their moral reasoning abilities.
  
  
  METHODS
  Systematic random sample design.
  
  
  METHODS
  A large southeastern city in the United States.
  
  
  METHODS
  450 independent and chain community pharmacists identified from the state board of pharmacy list of licensed community pharmacists.
  
  
  METHODS
  A mailed questionnaire that included a well-known moral reasoning instrument and collected demographic information.
  
  
  METHODS
  Moral Reasoning abilities and tenure of community pharmacists.
  
  
  RESULTS
  As a group, community pharmacists with greater years of tenure in community practice scored significantly lower on moral reasoning than those pharmacists with fewer years of tenure (p=0.016).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Four plausible explanations for the results are given including: a) a selection of lower ethical reasoners and/or an exodus of higher ethical reasoners from the community setting; b) a retrogression in the moral reasoning skills as community pharmacists obtain tenure in this setting; c) differences between the low and high moral reasoning groups may be due to a cohort effect; and d) the obtained practitioner sample may not have been representative of the population of community pharmacists.
authors.affiliation: Bernard J. Dunn School of Pharmacy, Shenandoah University, Winchester, VA 22601, USA. dlatif@su.edu
authors.forename: D A
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Latif
mesh_terms: D003157:Community Pharmacy Services; D004994:Ethics, Pharmacy; D006801:Humans; D035863:Moral Development; D010595:Pharmacists; D015206:Southwestern United States; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires