Background
Health professionals hold both professional and personal health beliefs, and it is likely that this has an impact on both which information one communicates and how. The importance of beliefs in relation to adherence to treatment has been stressed, but is not yet fully appreciated by health professionals. A larger project will analyse and compare beliefs about medicines among health professionals and patients.

Methods
The study was performed among pharmacy employees at 24 community pharmacies in Göteborg, Sweden. The participating pharmacies had a total of 372 employees (pharmacists, dispensing pharmacists, pharmacy technicians). Data collection was at the weekly pharmacy information meetings with a questionnaire comprising background questions (age, professional category, working experience and medication use) and the general part of Beliefs about Medicines Questionnaire (BMQ). For each statement in the BMQ, respondents marked their degree of agreement on a five-point Likert scale (1=strongly disagree, 2=disagree, 3=uncertain, 4=agree and 5=strongly agree). The BMQ has three subparts: General Harm, General Overuse and General Benefit.

Results
A majority of the 292 respondents were dispensing pharmacists. More than half of the respondents were aged 45 years or older and had worked in a pharmacy for 20 years or more. A higher proportion of dispensing pharmacists stated current use of traditional medicines compared to the other professional categories. The pharmacy employees had a mean score for General Benefit of 4.31 and a mean score for General Harm of 1.81. Compared to dispensing pharmacists, pharmacy technicians viewed medicines as more harmful; and compared to pharmacy technicians, pharmacists and dispensing pharmacists regarded medicines as more beneficial. Those who had worked in a pharmacy for 30-34 years regarded medicines as less harmful compared to those who had worked 0-4 years. Compared to non-users, current users of prescription drugs regarded medicines as more beneficial. When controlling for background characteristics, no confounders were detected for any of the three subscales.

Conclusions
The reason for the difference between dispensing pharmacists and technicians remain unclear. Nevertheless, the positive beliefs among pharmacy personnel may have an impact on the communication with clients and, eventually, clients' adherence to medicines.