ABSTRACT
Background: Establishment of Pradhan Mantri Bhartiya Janaushadhi Kendras through Pradhan Mantri Janaushadhi Pariyojana (PMBJP) is a breakthrough step to reduce expenses in healthcare due to costly branded names in prescription. Medical council of India also amended clause 1.5 of the Indian Medical Council Regulations, 2002 mandating the doctors to prescribe medicines by generic names in place of brand names. Moreover, medical practitioner nowadays has raised concern about education/qualification of the chemist who is being made the decision maker.Methods: In this questionnaire based cross-sectional observational study, all students admitted to post graduation course in academic year 2018 were included and those who were not willing to give consent were excluded from study. A knowledge, attitude and practices (KAP) questionnaire containing 12 questions was assessed by using true/false type and Likert scale-based questions. Descriptive statistics used to generate frequencies, percentages and proportions.Results: Majority of the population have answered positively about knowledge questions. Surprisingly 72.41% population don’t know about process of new drug approval. Most of them agreed to pros and cons of generic drug prescribing. 58.14% population always write generic names in their prescription. Shockingly 74.42% population write prescription based on their knowledge from promotional literature by a medical representative.Conclusions: Findings of present study highlights usefulness of the practice of writing generic names in prescriptions. It also raises concern about professional qualification of the chemist who will be decision maker in drug delivery to consumers.
ABSTRACT
Background: In an era of rapidly rising health care costs generic medicines provide a less expensive alternative to branded medicines. In addition to reducing the overall health care expenditure, it has been shown to improve adherence. Objective was to study knowledge and perception about generic drugs among patients coming to outpatient department of tertiary care centre.Methods: After ethical approval a cross sectional questionnaire based study was conducted. Patients (n=71) were interviewed according to questionnaire in vernacular language by investigator to fill questionnaire.Results: About 28% people think that price of generic drug is less than a branded drug while nearly 61% of people don’t know of it. Only 18.85% participants had taken generic medicine. Trusting efficacy of generic drugs only 30 participants were in favour it. Even they have not seen or heard publicity of generic drugs (61.97%). They (60.56%) opined that generic drugs never prescribe in our country.Conclusions: Limitation in knowledge and perception about generic medicines has been seen among participants.