ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the efficacy of an educational intervention to minimise the prescription of those new medicines whose therapeutic effects are of little benefit. DESIGN: Controlled and randomised experimental study. SETTING: 27 health centres in the province of Sevilla, Spain. PARTICIPANTS: 376 general practitioners. The 264 who worked in the same posts were randomised for the 6 pre-intervention months. 10 of them did not complete the post-intervention period. INTERVENTIONS: Four 45-minute training sessions in a 2-month period, given by health team doctors, with a critical reading of the studies available on recently marketed drugs, plus personal feed-back on prescription and bulletins on therapeutic novelties. The control group received only the feed-back and bulletins. MAIN MEASUREMENTS: Prescription of new medication of little benefit, measured as the number of packages out of the total. Second, the amount of coxib and eprosartan measured as defined daily doses. RESULTS: In the 6 months after the educational sessions, the doctors in the intervention group prescribed proportionately fewer therapeutic novelties of little benefit than those allocated to the control group (1.34% vs 1.62%; P<.001). The coxib and eprosartan prescribed showed only a non-significant trend towards less prescription by the intervention group. CONCLUSIONS: The group educational sessions, run by doctors trained in aspects of evidence-based medicine and prepared jointly with the pharmacy unit, reduced discreetly the prescription of new medicines that were not very innovative.