Abstract
Background: Patients may not adhere to treatment plans due to cost of medicines. Generic prescribing is a mechanism for reducing cost of drugs thereby improving access to healthcare. It is therefore of value to understand Nigerian physicians’ perception towards generic prescribing. Objectives: To determine the perception of a sample of physicians towards prescribing generic and branded medicines. Methods: A descriptive multi-centered cross-sectional study in two teaching hospitals was carried out with pre- tested, self-administered, structured questionnaires. Data collected were sorted and entered into SPSS version 23 for descriptive statistics and Instat GraphPad for inferential statistics. P-value ≤ 0.05 was considered significant. Ethical considerations were observed. Results: Response rate was 71%, majority of the respondents (59.9%) were males. Registrar, junior registrar and consultant constituted 36%, 23% and 9% respectively. Four components were extracted and identified as efficacy and packaging, availability of prescribing information, bioavailability and cost as factors influencing physician prescription of either generic or branded medicine. Cost had the highest mean score of 3.70 ± 1.26, indicating most influential factor. Majority of the physicians considered severity of illness (40.34%) a decision influencer. There was a significant association between facilities and demographics which showed a significant difference in the domains of efficacy (and packaging) and cost. Conclusion: Physician generic medicine prescribing appears to be influenced by their perception of the efficacy, cost, bioequivalence, marketing activities of pharmaceutical companies and their own current location of practice.
Published Version
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call