ATTITUDE OF PHYSICIANS TOWARD PATIENT PACKAGE INSERTS FOR MEDICATION INFORMATION IN BELGIUM

In Belgium, the distribution of medications to outpatients in communit y pharmacies is almost exclusively by branded unit-of-use packages, wi th a package insert inside every package. At the time of the study (sp ring 1990), the implementation of legislation that mandated a shift fr om highly technical documents to patient package inserts (PPIs), under standable by the lay person, had begun. This study explores the attitu de of practising physicians toward written medication information for patients. A mail questionnaire was sent to 1500 (8% random sample) Bel gian general practitioners and to 500 (22% random sample) internal med icine specialists. A total of 543 usable questionnaires were returned (27.5% return rate). Ninety-two percent of the physicians stated that their patients seldom or never requested additional information on dru g efficacy or side effects, during routine consultation; 30% estimated that more than half of their patients read the PPI; 75% expect that a patient would experience side effects after reading about them in the PPI; 59% agreed that the PPI could help the patient react more adequa tely in unforeseen situations. It was possible to cluster the responde nts in a stable segmentation of three clusters: moderately positive ph ysicians (20%), ambiguous to neutral physicians (44%), physicians over tly negative to written drug information (36%). The low response rate to this extensive postal questionnaire limits the conclusions to a qua litative description of relevant clusters of respondents. In contrast with the opinion of physicians about patient readership, results from other studies indicate that the vast majority of patients read the pac kage inserts.