Factors facilitating and hindering counselling about generic substitution and a reference price system in community pharmacies - a survey among Finnish dispensers

Table 1 Characteristics of the respondents and the target population

	Responding dispensers n (%)	Target dispensers n (%)^b
Gender^a	n = 493^c	n = 3253
Female	466 (94.5)	3095 (95.1)
Male	27 (5.5)	158 (4.9)
Age, years^a	n = 496^c	n = 3253
≤ 29	77 (15.5)*	372 (11.4)*
30–39	133 (26.8)	889 (27.3)
40–49	133 (26.8)	994 (30.6)
50–59	121 (24.4)	841 (25.9)
≥ 60	32 (6.5)	157 (4.8)
Number of prescriptions per year at the pharmacy	n = 493^c
≤ 30,000	38 (7.7)
30,001–60,000	76 (15.4)
60,001–100,000	154 (31.2)
≥ 100,001	225 (45.6)
Location of the pharmacy	n = 492^c
Southern Finland	148 (30.1)
Southwest Finland	58 (11.8)
Western and Inland Finland	130 (26.4)
Eastern Finland	88 (17.9)
Northern Finland	48 (9.8)
Lapland	20 (4.1)

^aRepresentativeness was analyzed in terms of the respondent’s age and gender
^bInformation based on the register of the Finnish Pharmacists’ Association in January 2018
^cSome of the respondents did not report their gender, age, number of prescriptions per year at the pharmacy or the location of the pharmacy
* p-value = 0.009, Chi-square test

ISSN: 1472-6963