Medicines Management
Issue no 5, p4
September/October 2002

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GPs fail to use formularies

General practitioners agree and comply with local formularies, but do not use them much, according to the results (PDF 50K) of a survey (IJPP 2002:10 (suppl):R10).

As a result, the authors say the influence of pharmaceutical advisers remains uncertain.

The survey questioned GPs in two east London primary care trusts about what influenced their choice of drug most.

Among the 185 that replied, the strongest influencing factors were found to be specialist or peer recommendation, guidelines and their own previous experience — between 86 and 91 per cent of respondents agreed these factors influenced them most.