• African health sciences · Dec 2008

    Access and use of medicines information sources by physicians in public hospitals in Uganda: a cross-sectional survey.

    • Winifred A Tumwikirize, Jasper W Ogwal-Okeng, Osa Vernby, Willy W Anokbonggo, Lars L Gustafsson, and Cecilia S Lundborg.
    • Department of Pharmacology & Therapeutics, Faculty of Medicine, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda. winnietumwi@yahoo.com
    • Afr Health Sci. 2008 Dec 1; 8 (4): 220-6.

    BackgroundRational and cost-effective prescription of medicines requires up-to-date and readily accessible medicines information. There are several studies on availability and access to medicines information sources, but have been conducted only in high-income countries.ObjectiveTo assess medicines information sources accessed by physicians in public hospitals in Uganda, and physicians' opinion on establishment of a medicines information centre in the country.MethodsA cross-sectional survey including 369 physicians from six district, six regional and two university hospitals. Data was collected using a semi-structured self-administered questionnaire.ResultsResponse rate was 91%. This included 31, 136 and 168 physicians from the district, regional and university hospitals, respectively. In the district hospitals the source of medicines information reported to be most available was colleagues (100%), while in the regional and university hospitals it was literature from pharmaceutical companies (98%) and hard copy of research publications (99%) respectively. The most frequently used source in the district and regional hospitals was National Standard Treatment Guideline (90% and 73% respectively), and colleagues in university hospitals (89%). Accessibility problems with reported available sources were commonest with research publications in medical journals, both hard copy and through the internet, MIMS, pharmacists and pharmacologists. Need for a medicines information centre was indicated by 80% of the respondents.ConclusionMajority of the physicians in public hospitals in Uganda have limited access to unbiased drug information. Therefore, there is need to assess the feasibility of establishing a drug information centre, and then assess its use during a trial period.

      Pubmed     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…

What will the 'Medical Journal of You' look like?

Start your free 21 day trial now.

We guarantee your privacy. Your email address will not be shared.