Is there a relationship between attitudes of general practitioners/family doctors and attitudes of their patients regarding industry-sponsored clinical investigations? A cross-sectional survey in a convenience sample of doctors and patients across nine European countries.

Aim: To assess the relationship between the attitudes of general practitioners/family medicine doctors (GP/FD) and of their patients toward industry-sponsored clinical research.

Methods: A cross-sectional survey included volunteer GPs/FDs who then enrolled and interviewed their patients. Data were analyzed in hierarchical models (patients nested in GPs/FDs, nested in countries/regions).

Results: A total of 201 GPs/FDs from nine European countries responded to the invitation and enrolled 995 of their patients. We observed mild associations between some of the GPs/FDs' attitudes (general opinion on sponsored clinical studies, appreciation of the general values of such studies, views about the importance of participant protection/privacy) and some of the patients' attitudes (appreciation of the general values and of risks associated with sponsored clinical studies, importance assigned to potential personal benefits from participation). We observed no association between GPs/FDs' attitudes and patients' willingness to participate in such studies. However, willingness to participate increased with higher patients' appreciation of the general values of sponsored studies, decreased with higher patients' appreciation of associated risks, and showed a quadratic trend across the levels of importance assigned by patients to potential personal benefits (willingness was higher when the assigned importance was very low or very high). More importance to GP/FD's advice in this respect was assigned by patients who assigned more importance to potential personal benefits, who were better educated, and who resided in rural/suburban dwellings.

Conclusions: In the present convenience sample, lay-person attitudes about and willingness to participate in industry-sponsored clinical studies were associated with the attitudes of their GPs/FDs.