AN AUDIT OF EMERGENCY COMMUNICATION FOLLOWING THE OCTOBER 1995 PILL ALERT IN THE UK

Questionnaires from 287 practitioners who see patients for family plan ning advice have been evaluated to try to assess the quality of inform ation they received since the pill alert of October 1995. Questions we re designed to record how information had been received and to test th e respondent's knowledge of the guidelines contained in the two offici al letters which were circulated during the alert. Less than 70 per ce nt of responses were correct and specific problems were identified wit h respect to at risk groups. Practitioners without a specific interest in family planning scored less. Electronic media were not generally u seful. Recommendations for future communication strategies are the use of multiple routes of information dissemination including TV and radi o, using family planning clinics as resource centres and simplifying t he information to only that which is urgent and for which scientific e vidence exists.