Changing doctor prescribing behaviour

The aim of this overview was to identify interventions that change doctor p rescribing behaviour and to derive conclusions for practice and further res earch. Relevant studies (indicating prescribing as a behaviour change) were located from a database of studies maintained by the Cochrane Collaboratio n on Effective Professional Practice. This register is kept up to date by s earching the following databases for reports of relevant research: DHSS-DAT A; EMBASE; MEDLINE; SIGLE; Resource Database in Continuing Medical Educatio n (1975-1994), along with bibliographies of related topics, hand searching of key journals and personal contact with content area experts. Randomised controlled trials and non-equivalent group designs with pre- and post-inter vention measures were included. Outcome measures were those used by the stu dy authors. For each study we determined whether these were positive, negat ive or inconclusive. Positive studies (+) were those that demonstrated a st atistically significant change in the majority of outcomes measured at leve l of p less than or equal to 0.05 between the intervention and control grou ps. Negative studies (-) showed a significant change in the opposite direct ion and inconclusive studies (approximate to) showed no significant change compared to control or no overall positive findings. We identified 79eligib le studies which described 96 separate interventions to change prescribing behaviour. Of these interventions, 49 (51%, 41%-61%) showed a positive sign ificant change compared to the control group but interpretation of specific interventions is limited due to wide and overlapping confidence intervals.