Participants: Two hundred and seventy hospital pharmacists (response rate = 45%).
Intervention: Hospital pharmacists were invited to complete a TPB survey, based on a prescribing
error scenario that had resulted in serious patient harm. Multiple regression was used to determine
the relative influence of different TPB variables, and participant demographics, on the pharmacists’
self-reported intention to report the medication safety incident.
Main outcome measure(s): The TPB variables predicting intention to report: attitude towards behaviour,
subjective norm, perceived behavioural control and descriptive norm.
Results: Overall, the hospital pharmacists held strong intentions to report the error, with senior pharmacists
being more likely to report. Perceived behavioural control (ease or difficulty of reporting),
Descriptive Norms (belief that other pharmacists would report) and Attitudes towards Behaviour
(expected benefits of reporting) showed good correlation with, and were statistically significant
predictors of, intention to report the error [R = 0.568, R2 = 0.323, adjusted R2 = 0.293, P < 0.001].
Conclusions: This study suggests that efforts to improve medication safety incident reporting by
hospital pharmacists should focus on their behavioural and control beliefs about the reporting process.
This should include instilling greater confidence about the benefits of reporting and not harming
professional relationships with doctors, greater clarity about what/not to report and a simpler
reporting system.