Healthy Skepticism Library item: 11073

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: Journal Article

Mikhail SS, Zwar NA, Vagholkar S, Dennis SM, Day RO.
Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs in general practice: a decision-making dilemma
MJA 2007 Aug 6; 187:(3):160-163
http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/187_03_060807/mik11253_fm.html

Abstract:

Objectives: To examine the effect of the debate on the safety of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) on decision making by Australian general practitioners and patients with osteoarthritis (OA), and to explore issues concerning the use of NSAIDs from both prescriber and consumer perspectives.

Design and setting: A qualitative study in which five focus groups (three for GPs, and two for patients with OA) were conducted between 15 May and 4 August 2006 in south-western Sydney.

Participants: Five advanced general practice registrars, six experienced GPs, and 20 patients with OA aged 54–85 years.

Main outcome measures: Key themes and issues identified by content analysis of focus group transcripts.

Results: GPs reported adopting a cautious approach to prescribing NSAIDs because of uncertainty about safety and medicolegal concerns. They were sceptical about information provided by the pharmaceutical industry and found the literature about the safety of NSAIDs confusing. Time was identified as a major barrier to adequate discussion with patients, and explaining the risk to patients in a meaningful way was perceived as a challenge. Patients wanted information and sought it from a range of sources, most commonly pharmacists and GPs. Most patients made active decisions about using or not using NSAIDs, with some favouring physical function over safety. Patients were also using other forms of treatment including alternative medicine.

Conclusion: Our findings reflect the need to provide clear, unbiased information about NSAIDs to help both GPs and patients negotiate this decision-making dilemma.

Notes:

Free full text

Please
Click to Register

(read more)

then
Log in
for free access to more features of this website.

Forgot your username or password?

You are invited to
apply for membership
of Healthy Skepticism,
if you support our aims.

Pay a subscription

Support our work with a donation

Buy Healthy Skepticism T Shirts

If there is something you don't like, please tell us. If you like our work, please tell others.

Announcements

PharmedOut’s annual conference: Missing The Target: When Practitioners Harm More Than Heal

No Free Lunch is merging with Healthy Skepticism

Conference program: Pharma Knows Best? Managing Medical Knowledge

Prescrire’s proposals for France’s national conference on medicines policy

Pharmed Out Conference ‘Pharma Knows Best? Managing Medical Knowledge’

More announcements

What's new on this site

Library Home

Library Search

Far too large a section of the treatment of disease is to-day controlled by the big manufacturing pharmacists, who have enslaved us in a plausible pseudo-science...
The blind faith which some men have in medicines illustrates too often the greatest of all human capacities - the capacity for self deception...
Some one will say, Is this all your science has to tell us? Is this the outcome of decades of good clinical work, of patient study of the disease, of anxious trial in such good faith of so many drugs? Give us back the childlike trust of the fathers in antimony and in the lancet rather than this cold nihilism. Not at all! Let us accept the truth, however unpleasant it may be, and with the death rate staring us in the face, let us not be deceived with vain fancies...
we need a stern, iconoclastic spirit which leads, not to nihilism, but to an active skepticism - not the passive skepticism, born of despair, but the active skepticism born of a knowledge that recognizes its limitations and knows full well that only in this attitude of mind can true progress be made.
- William Osler 1909