Evaluating patients’, physicians’ and pharmacy professionals’ perception and concern regarding generic medicines in Gondar town, northwest Ethiopia: A multi-stakeholder, cross-sectional survey

Begashaw Melaku Gebresillassie, Sewunet Admasu Belachew, Yonas Getaye Tefera, Tamrat Befekadu Abebe, Abebe Basazn Mekuria, Kaleab Taye Haile and Daniel Asfaw Erku

PLOS ONE, 2018, vol. 13, issue 11, 1-13

Abstract: Background: Generic medicine prescribing has become common practice in many countries. However, data regarding the perceptions of stakeholders (patients, prescribers and dispensers) regarding generic medicines in Ethiopia is scarce. The present survey aimed to investigate the perception of patients, physicians and pharmacy professionals regarding generic medicines in Ethiopia. Methods: A quantitative cross-sectional survey was conducted in Gondar town, Northwest Ethiopia between January 1 and February 1, 2017. The questionnaire, comprised of 5-point Likert scale items on perception and concerns regarding generic medicine, was administered to patients, physicians and pharmacy professionals working in the community drug retail outlets. Frequencies, percentages, and median were calculated using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software version 21.0 for Windows to describe different variables. Results: The survey was completed by 612 participants. More than half of patients, 56% (n = 219) knew about the term brand and generic medicines and 38.7% (n = 151) of patients agreed/strongly agreed that brand medicines are more effective. Nearly half, 47% (n = 184) of patients agreed that they should have the option of choosing between generic and brand medicines and 61.4% (n = 240) of patients believed that cost should be considered before a medicineis prescribed. The majority of physicians 70.6% (n = 101) indicated a very low generic medicine prescription rate. 56% (n = 130) of physicians and 87.2% (n = 68) of pharmacy professionals agreed that they need a standard guideline to both prescribers and pharmacists on brand substitution process. Furthermore, 39.9% (n = 57) of the physicians and 87.2% (n = 68) of pharmacy professionals agreed that drug advertisements by the manufacturers would influence their prescribing/dispensing practice. Conclusions: Overall, our findings demonstrate a knowledge gap among patients towards the perception of generics, perceiving generics are less effective and inferior in quality compared to their branded equivalents. The majority of physicians reported a very low generic medicine prescribing rate and the majority pharmacy professionals’ dispensing practice was influenced by drug advertisements. Hence, a customized educational program should be developed and implemented to patients, prescribers and dispensers so as to boost the acceptability of generic medicines and increase generic prescribing and/or substitution.

Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0204146 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 04146&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0204146

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0204146

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone (plosone@plos.org).