By Michael Hotchkiss, Office of Communications

Phar­ma­cists reg­u­larly face a range of eth­i­cal dilem­mas, from decid­ing whether to dis­pense emer­gency con­tra­cep­tion to man­ag­ing requests for nar­cotics, and must nav­i­gate a range of rela­tion­ships with other health-care professionals.

Using 95 inter­views with phar­ma­cists work­ing in retail and hos­pi­tal set­tings, Prince­ton researcher Eliz­a­beth Chiarello shows how orga­ni­za­tions shape the way phar­ma­cists exer­cise their roles as med­ical, legal, fis­cal and moral gate­keep­ers. An arti­cle by Chiarello based on the research was pub­lished online by the jour­nal Social Sci­ence and Med­i­cine.

Accord­ing to the paper by Chiarello, a soci­ol­o­gist work­ing as a post­doc­toral research asso­ciate at the Office of Pop­u­la­tion Research within the Woodrow Wil­son School of Inter­na­tional and Pub­lic Affairs, the find­ings sug­gest new direc­tions for the­o­riz­ing about eth­i­cal decision-making in med­ical contexts.

Read the abstract.

Chiarello, Eliz­a­beth. 2013. How Orga­ni­za­tional Con­text Affects Bioeth­i­cal Decision-Making: Phar­ma­cists’ Man­age­ment of Gate­keep­ing Processes in Retail and Hos­pi­tal Set­tings. Social Sci­ence and Med­i­cine. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2012.11.041

Fund­ing for this research was pro­vided by the Andrew W. Mel­lon Foun­da­tion, the Amer­i­can Coun­cil of Learned Soci­eties, the U.S. Depart­ment and Health and Human Ser­vices Agency for Health­care Research and Qual­ity, the Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Office of Pop­u­la­tion Research, the Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Cen­ter for Health and Well­be­ing, and a grant from the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, Irvine Cen­ter for Orga­ni­za­tional Research.