Promoting public awareness of clinical trials in Montenegro

Abstract

In order to successfully build a clinical research infrastructure one of the key imperatives is that the public understand and strongly support clinical research. Literature data showed that the general public is not sufficiently informed about the purpose and importance of clinical trials. The aim of this study is to investigate awareness of general public in Montenegro regarding clinical trials. The data from questionnaire completed by 400 randomly selected people aged 19 and over was collected. SPSS software was used for statistical analysis. There were statistically significant gender differences with regards to clinical trials awareness. Only 44.2% of all male subjects versus 70.8% of all female ones were informed about the definition of clinical trials (P < 0.001). Both were mostly informed through the media. While 49.8% women thought that medicines on the market were clinically tested, 47.5% men were not sure about that (P = 0.037). The main motive for clinical trial enrolment for subjects under the age of 25 and over the age of 50 was curing the existing disease, while for subjects aged 26-50 was financial reimbursement (37.6% and 44.2% versus 34.9%; P < 0.001). These results indicate that additional educational efforts are needed in order to improve the knowledge of significance of clinical trials. Therefore, the Agency for Medicines and Medical Devices of Montenegro, in accordance with its competences - education about medicines, will be providing more information relevant to clinical trials to general public in the future.