Percepción de los médicos de familia acerca de un programa de ayuda a la prescripción para reducir las interacciones medicamentosas

Abstract

Objective

To assess GP views on the usefulness and the kind of issue of a programme aimed to reduce the occurrence of drug interactions (DI) in primary care.

Material and methods

Cross-sectional study. Questionnaire survey of GPs participating in the PRISMAp programme. Setting: Primary care, Murcia Region of Spain. Participants: 189 GPs participating in the PRISMAp programme who received periodic information about the DI detected in the electronic medical records of their patients. Measurements: questions about the usefulness (6), opportunities to improve (5) and the kind of issue of the report received (3) where asked using a 5-items Likert scale. The agreement/disagreement were obtained considering the percentage of Likert scores greater and smaller than 3, respectively.

Results

The response rate was 43.9% (83 of 189). Of these, 77.5% think that PRISMAp is suitable to warn them about DI, 41.3% have changed their prescriptions, and 52.0% have frequently been informed about DI that they did not know. The best valued opportunities to improve were the incorporation of recommendations to the electronic prescription module (93.3%) and the warning of potential DI when prescribing (94.7%).

Conclusions

This study provides an approach to the perceptions and a better understanding of the GPs attitudes toward the programmes aimed to assist their prescriptions and, specially, toward those aimed to reduce the DI. They are considered useful and able to improve the safety or their prescription.