• Health policy · Sep 2015

    General Practitioners' intention to prescribe and prescribing patterns in selected European settings: The OTCSOCIOMED project.

    • Vasiliki Tsiantou, Joanna Moschandreas, Antonis Bertsias, Maria Papadakaki, Aristoula Saridaki, Dominic Agius, Zuleyha Alper, Tomas Faresjo, Martina Klimkova, Luc Martinez, George Samoutis, Jiří Vlček, and Christos Lionis.
    • Department of Health Economics, National School of Public Health, 196 Alexandras Avenue, 11521 Athens, Greece; Clinic of Social and Family Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Crete, P.O. Box 2208, 71003, Greece. Electronic address: vtsiantou@esdy.edu.gr.
    • Health Policy. 2015 Sep 1; 119 (9): 1265-74.

    AbstractThe aim of this paper is to explore general practitioners' (GPs) prescribing intentions and patterns across different European regions using the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). A cross-sectional study was undertaken in selected geographically defined Primary Health Care areas in Cyprus, Czech Republic (CZ), France, Greece, Malta, Sweden and Turkey. Face-to-face interviews were conducted using a TPB-based questionnaire. The number of GP participants ranged from 39 to 145 per country. Possible associations between TPB direct measures (attitudes, subjective norms (SN) and perceived behavioral control (PBC)) and intention to prescribe were assessed by country. On average, GPs thought positively of, and claimed to be in control of, prescribing. Correlations between TPB explanatory measures and prescribing intention were weak, with TPB direct measures explaining about 25% of the variance in intention to prescribe in Malta and CZ but only between 3% and 5% in Greece, Sweden and Turkey. SN appeared influential in GPs from Malta; attitude and PBC were statistically significant in GPs from CZ. GPs' prescribing intentions and patterns differed across participating countries, indicating that country-specific interventions are likely to be appropriate. Irrational prescribing behaviors were more apparent in the countries where an integrated primary care system has still not been fully developed and policies promoting the rational use of medicines are lacking. Demand-side measures aimed at modifying GPs prescribing behavior are deemed necessary. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…