Prescribers prefer people: The sources of information used by doctors for prescribing suggest that the medium is more important than the message

Aims The sources of prescribing information are legion but there is little knowledge about which are actually used in practice by doctors when prescri bing. The aims of this study were to determine the sources of prescribing i nformation considered important by doctors, establish which were used in pr actice, and investigate if hospital and primary care physicians differed in their use of the sources. Methods Two hundred general practitioners (GPs) and 230 hospital doctors we re asked to rate information sources in terms of their importance for presc ribing 'old' and 'new' drugs, and then to name the source from which inform ation about the last new drug prescribed was actually derived. Results Among 108 GPs, the Drugs and Therapeutics Bulletin and medical jour nal articles were most frequently rated as important for information on bot h old and new drugs while pharmaceutical representatives and hospital/consu ltant recommendations were more important for information on new drugs, as opposed to old. In practice, information on the last new drug prescribed wa s derived from pharmaceutical representatives in 42% of cases and hospital/ consultant recommendations in 36%, with other sources used infrequently. Am ong 118 hospital doctors, the British National Formulary (BNF) and senior c olleagues were of greatest theoretical importance. In practice, information on the last new drug prescribed was derived from a broad range of sources: colleagues, 29%; pharmaceutical representatives, 18%; hospital clinical me etings, 15%; journal articles, 13%; lectures, 10%. GPs and hospital doctors differed significantly in their use of pharmaceutical representatives (42% vs 18%) and colleagues (7% vs 29%) as sources of prescribing information ( P<0.0001 for both). Conclusions The sources most frequently rated important in theory were not those most used in practice, especially among GPs. Both groups under-estima ted the importance of pharmaceutical representatives. Most importantly, the sources of greatest practical importance were those involving the transfer of information through the medium of personal contact.