Martine Kruijtbosch

128 Chap t e r 3. 3 METHODS In our previous study, an electronic survey was developed and validated (Appendix (Table 6) of Chapter 3.2). The survey explored Dutch community pharmacists’ MRPs when handling three situations of drug shortages: a contraceptive shortage (Contraceptive scenario), a levodopa shortage (Parkinson’s scenario) and an alendronic acid shortage (Osteoporosis scenario; Table 2 in Chapter 3.2). Data collection The survey was developed to measure the extent to which the three MRPs (i.e. the BO-MRP, RR-MRP and PE-MRP) played a role in pharmacists’ reasoning in the three situations of drug shortages. For this, the respondents had to use a 4-point scale (very likely, likely, unlikely and very unlikely) to rate the likelihood that they would use each of the nine options of intended action in the three drug shortage situations. The respondents then had to rate the extent to which 13 considerations would play a role in their handling of each drug shortage problem using a 5-point scale (very strong, strong, weakly, very weakly and no role). Finally, the respondents had to rank their four most relevant considerations. The respondents also provided their gender, age, type of pharmacy (chain or non-chain) and job profile (managing or locum pharmacist). Identifying pharmacists’ dominant MRPs For each responding pharmacist an MRP ranking score was calculated for each drug shortage scenario. For that ranking score, a numerical weight from 4 (first-ranked) to 1 (fourth-ranked) was given to each ranked consideration. 10 Per MRP per scenario, the weights were totalled. A respondent could receive a maximum score per MRP per scenario of 10 points (if four considerations of oneMRPwere ranked) and aminimumscore of 0 points (if no considerations of one MRP were ranked). A dominant MRP within each drug shortage scenario was defined by an MRP ranking score of at least 6 points (i.e. from 6 onwards to 10, the numerical weight of the score suggests a higher presence of the MRP in the respondent) and a score of at least 18 points in all three scenarios together. For example, if respondents scored 6 out of 10 points for their PE-MRP ranking scores for one drug shortage scenario, these respondents would be counted as having a dominant PE-MRP for their intended handling options in that drug shortage scenario. Per drug shortage scenario and in all three scenarios together, pharmacists with a dominant BO-, RR- and PE-MRP ranking score were counted and numbered in three groups: pharmacists with a dominant BO-, RR- or PE-MRP, respectively. The pharmacists who did not receive such identification were labelled as ‘unclear MRP’.