Objectives
Generic medicines are recommended and used largely due to their cost effectiveness. Still, physicians prefer brand medicines rather than their generic counterparts. Therefore, the current research was aimed to evaluate the preferential attitude of physicians towards brand medicines over generic medicines in Pakistan.
Methods
This is a cross‐sectional survey which was conducted in two public sector hospitals in Bahawalpur, Punjab, Pakistan. A total of 150 physicians were interviewed using a 17‐itemed self‐administered questionnaire. A 4‐point Likert scale was used and responses were measured as strongly disagree, disagree, agree and strongly agree. A Cronbach's alpha of 0.66 was obtained for all the domains. Statistical analysis was performed using spss (version 15.0).
Key findings
A response rate of 84.3% was achieved. Slightly more than half of the physicians were men (52.7%) with 64% being specialist doctors, and nearly 61.3% had more than 10 years of experience. Slightly more than half of the respondents agreed (n = 99; 66%) that they prefer brand medicines over generic medicines because of higher efficacious potential. This was found to be statistically significant with respect to gender with men reported greater agreement (P < 0.001). Interestingly all the specialists (n = 96; 64%; P = 0.045) agreed not to prefer generics over brand medicines because of lesser potency.
Conclusions
It is concluded that physicians' prescribing practices are significantly affected by their lack of knowledge regarding generic medicines, patient‐related factors, and by the influence of pharmaceutical advertisements.