title: Unraveling Motivational Profiles of Health Care Professionals for Continuing Education: The Example of Pharmacists in the Netherlands.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Continuing education (CE) can support health care professionals in maintaining and developing their knowledge and competencies. Although lack of motivation is one of the most important barriers of pharmacists' participation in CE, we know little about the quality or the quantity of motivation. We used the self-determination theory, which describes autonomous motivation (AM) as originating from within an individual and controlled motivation (CM) as originating from external factors, as a framework for this study. Our aim was to obtain insight into the quality and quantity of pharmacists' motivation for CE.
  
  
  METHODS
  The scores of 425 pharmacists on Academic Motivation Scale were subjected to K-means cluster analysis to generate motivational profiles.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We unraveled four motivational profiles: (1) good quality with high AM/low CM, (2) high quantity with high AM/high CM, (3) poor quality with low AM/high CM, and (4) low quantity with low AM/low CM. Female pharmacists, pharmacists working in a hospital pharmacy, pharmacists working for more than 10 years, and pharmacists not in training were highly represented in the good-quality profile. Pharmacists working in a community pharmacy, pharmacists working for less than 10 years, and pharmacists in training were highly represented in the high-quantity profile. Male pharmacists were more or less equally distributed over the four profiles. The highest percentage of pharmacy owners was shown in the low-quantity profile, and the highest percentage of the nonowners was shown in the good-quality profile.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Pharmacists exhibit different motivational profiles, which are associated with their background characteristics, such as gender, ownership of business, practice setting, and current training. Motivational profiles could be used to tailor CE courses for pharmacists.
authors.affiliation: Ms. Tjin A Tsoi: PhD student, Utrecht Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Utrecht, and CEO of Netherlands Centre for Post-Academic Education in Pharmacy, Zeist, the Netherlands. Prof. dr. de Boer: Professor of Pharmacotherapy, Utrecht Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands. Prof. dr. Croiset: Professor of Medical Education and Director of VUmc School of Medical Sciences, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Dr. Koster: Associate Professor of Pharmacology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands. Dr. Kusurkar: Assistant Professor and Head of Research in Education at VUmc School of Medical Sciences, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
authors.forename: Sharon L N M
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Tjin A Tsoi
authors.forename: Anthonius
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: de Boer
authors.forename: Gerda
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Croiset
authors.forename: Andries S
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Koster
authors.forename: Rashmi A
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Kusurkar
mesh_terms: D004513:Education, Pharmacy, Continuing / Q000592:standards*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation; D009426:Netherlands; D010595:Pharmacists / Q000523:psychology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires