Class of 2005 Abstract / Objective: To determine what factors rural pharmacists believe affect their ability to counsel patients and provide pharmaceutical care. Subjects: Pharmacy managers in retail pharmacies in rural cities in Arizona (population <30,000). Methods: Questionnaires were administered through phone conversations regarding amount of time spent on counseling, items included in a counsel, views on counseling, factors impacting ability to counsel, patient care services provided, access to educational materials, difficulty and methods of getting time off, number of vacations taken, commute time to work, years working in a rural area and as a pharmacist, and location of college that pharmacists graduated from. Results: Questionnaires were completed by 40 pharmacy managers (80% response rate). Pharmacists that spent more time counseling believed that counseling had a larger impact on patient outcomes that those that counseled less. Those that counseled more had also taken more vacations in the previous ten years. Implications: Pharmacists views on the impact that their counseling has on patient outcomes affects the amount of time they spend on counseling of patients.

Class of 2017 Abstract / Objectives: To explore whether rural pharmacists express more stigmatized attitudes towards patients with psychiatric disorders, compared to their urban counterparts. Methods: Data was collected from participants attending the AzPA Southwestern Clinical Pharmacy Seminar during a weekend in February, 2015, using a questionnaire adapted from the Mental Illness: Clinicians’ Attitudes (MICA) Scale v4. The questionnaire consisted of demographic and attitude assessment questions regarding patients suffering from psychiatric disorders across different domains (quality of life, fear of patients, admitting to having a psychiatric disorder, and more). Participants were also asked if they would be interested in taking a continuing education course on mental health. Results: The majority of participants that completed the study were women (75%) and identified racially as white (89%). Pharmacists practice settings were as follows: 79% of pharmacists worked in urban areas and 21% in rural areas. Rural pharmacists displayed significantly higher rates of stigmatized attitudes compared to their urban peers (mean scale score 37.65 vs. 40.15, p=0.049). Conclusions: Pharmacists that practice in rural settings expressed more stigmatized attitudes, compared to their urban counterparts, towards patients diagnosed with psychiatric disorders.