Prescribing Generic drugs: Insights into Doctors’ Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices in a Rural Tertiary care Teaching Hospital in Northern India

Abstract

Introduction: The assessment of knowledge of prescribers and their attitude and practice towards generic drugs would help to identify the misunderstandings regarding generics and identify the hindrances which prescribers face in prescribing generic medicines.
Objectives: To assess the Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice (KAP) of doctors towards prescribing generic medicines.
Materials and Methods: A questionnaire based cross-sectional study to assess the KAP of generic medicines among prescribers working in a tertiary-care teaching hospital, Government Medical College and Associated Hospital, Jalaun (India). A questionnaire containing 34 questions was designed to assess the Knowledge, Attitude and Practices of doctors about generic medicines and the factors considered before prescribing the drugs.
Results: More than half (54.36%) of the participants were aware that generic name and generic drugs were not the same and about three fourth of the study participants (78.64%) agreed that generic medicines are usually intended to be interchangeable with an branded drug which was statistically significant; 59.22% of participants regarded generics as safe as branded drugs (p=0.008). 62.13% doctors were of the opinion that generic medicines are as effective as branded drugs (p=0.005); 72.61% of participants prescribe generic drugs (p=0.0001); Most of the prescribers (76.69%) were not influenced by medical representatives (p=0.001) while 55.33% believed that changing the patient from brand name to generic drug (p=0.1266) may change the results of the therapy.
Conclusion: Although most of doctors prescribed generic drugs yet some lacunae exist regarding knowledge and attitude about generic drugs. Most of the doctors were concerned regarding safety and efficacy of generic drugs. Doctors also wanted government to come up with guidelines regarding prescribing generic drugs and wider implementation of Jan Aushadhi covering all hospitals.