Critical appraisal of drug promotional literature: Educative or misleading for second year MBBS students

Abstract

Background: Drug promotional literatures (DPLs) are a systemic way arrangement of the knowledge concerning individual advertisable drug components using WHO criteria. An excessive level of competition exists among pharmaceutical corporations inside the quest for the prescription. Although, a considerable quantity of clinical representatives sells their medications in an unethical way, which may pose challenges to the physicians for drugs’ rational choice, mainly in medical graduates. Aims and Objective: The present study is undertaken to evaluate the drug promotional literature (DPLs) as per the WHO criteria. Materials and Methods: A 100 different drug promotional cards were collected from the pharmaceutical companies in our hospital and given to II year medical students for analysis of DPLs using inclusion criteria given by WHO 1988 standards. Results: Out of a hundred drug promotional cards, all DPC were mentioned in both the generic and brand name in WHO prescribed format. Beside, SDs 73 (73%) presented single dose formulations and 27 (18%) presented single dose formulations. However, only 67% recorded medications side effects and significant ADR. A majority of DPLs (34%) did not submit any research to back up their point. In addition, 43% of literature made false claim and also 23% of having relevant graphs and 41% of relevant picture, 59% are irrelevant. Conclusion: The research finding reveled that none of the above DPLs met WHO standards. They contain false claim and catchy statement. The content of the majority DPLs studied was found to be misleading rather than educative.