Factors Influencing Prescribing Perceived Utility of Drugs: Experiences from Iraqi Kurdistan.

INTRODUCTION

Pharmaceutical expenditures have increased dramatically in most developed and developing countries in recent decades. Healthcare system policymakers have expressed concerns about the inappropriate, irrational, or harmful prescribing of drugs.

OBJECTIVES

The attitudes of physicians towards prescribing generic drugs and predictors of perceived utility of drugs were investigated in the present study.

METHODS

In this cross-sectional research, 77 physicians at different levels of job hierarchies, working in various public sector shifts, were recruited to participate in a survey of their attitudes toward prescribing generic drugs in Iraqi Kurdistan in 2018. The doctors were located in a general, an emergency, and a pediatric hospital. A self-administered structured questionnaire was designed based on the extended technology acceptance model for product use (TETPU).

RESULTS

The doctors agreed that drugs should be prescribed according to their utility for patients (median [M] = 5.0; interquartile range [IQR] = 2.9). Most of the physicians mentioned that they prescribed drugs according to the patients' needs (75.0%), evaluation of the availability of alternatives (69.0%) and consumer perceptions of a price (69.0%). The analysis showed that (1) the importance of physicians' perceptions and their recognition of patients' need achievement (P=.012), (2) the physicians' recognition of the actual use of drugs by consumers (P=.030) and (3) being male (p=.009) were associated with perceptions of drug utility.

CONCLUSIONS

The study's results suggest that perceived drug utility in prescription writing is associated with physicians' perceptions of need achievement and attitudes toward how patients actually use medicines.