MOTIVATIONS SURROUNDING THE PURSUIT OF A PHARMACY CAREER - THE CASE OF POLISH STUDENTS

The objective was to examine the motivation for studying pharmacy. A self-administered questionnaire, developed and validated by the authors, was completed by a sample of 414 Polish pharmaceutical students (Year 1 - Year 5). The students ranked their motives on a Likert-like scale and their underlying dimensions were identified using exploratory and confirmatory techniques. Several socio-demographic variables and future pharmaceutical career plans were-also identified. The reliability and validity of the proposed questionnaire were confirmed. Factor analysis revealed three factors determining the choices of the respondents: coincidental, instrumental and autotelic. Two of the top three reasons for studying pharmacy were autotelic. A relatively small percentage of respondents chose a pharmaceutical education due to coincidence. The motivation for choosing a pharmaceutical career remained relatively stable among students of all the study years. The practice point of our survey can be that, basing on Polish case, we,propose the validated self-administered questionnaire that displays acceptable construct validity and internal consistency, and can serve as an example tool to assess the particular motives and expectations of potential students and employees in the pharmaceutical area.