Prescription drug abuse: a comparison of prescriber and pharmacist perspectives.

This study compared perceptions of prescribers and pharmacists (N = 89) regarding multiple aspects of prescription drug abuse. Questionnaires were developed to assess perceptions regarding the prevalence of prescription drug abuse, self-perceived communication competence, and additional communication and prescription drug abuse domains. Pharmacists perceived a larger percentage of patients (41%) to be abusing opioid pain relievers as compared with their prescriber colleagues (17%). Both prescribers and pharmacists indicated improvements in prescriber-pharmacist communication would serve to deter prescription drug abuse. Self-efficacy beliefs for detecting and discussing prescription drug abuse with patients were low for both cohorts. Implications and limitations are noted. Year of data collection: 2012 SETTING: Rural Appalachia Data Collection Instruments: Prescriber- and pharmacist-specific survey instruments Data Analysis Techniques: Independent samples t-test; Mann-Whitney U test.