ABSTRACT
Introduction: The General Medical Council (GMC) provides information regarding sharing information with patients under Good Medical Practice for health care professionals and suggests that medication and treatment side effects must be explained appropriately. Method: To achieve the aim of this study all Consultants, Specialist Registrars (SpRs), Staff Grades / Associate Specialists (SASGs), Senior House Officers (SHOs) and Foundation doctors were sent postal / e-mail questionnaire to inform regarding side effects information they provide to patients. Results: 110 postal / e-mail questionnaires were sent out for doctors to respond about the information they provide regarding the serious and or common side effects of medication. The investigators received 52 (47.3%) responses which included 25 Consultants, 1 SpR, 4 SASGs, 18 SHOs and 4 Foundation doctors. Clozapine and Lithium stand out to be medications for which most doctors would always provide information about common side effects. It was interesting to note that the common side effect information of anti psychotic medications is provided by less than 60% of doctors. In our study we found that 68% of Consultants tend to always provide information about common side effects and 71% of them always provide information about serious side effects of medications. Due to small number of staff grades and SpRs we cannot comment on comparison but 57% and 67% of SHOs provide information about common and serious side effect of medications respectively. Conclusion: Doctors provide more information to the patients if the medication is Clozapine or Lithium but not for Benzodiazepines. Medication adherence could be increased if the patients are well aware of what to expect when they are on medications. Doctors provide information but are poor in documenting the same and our hypothesis is accepted