Research into prescribing habits

General Practitioners (GPs) will be better equipped to make difficult decisions about how best to treat their patients through independent research into their prescribing habits to be undertaken with the National Prescribing Service (NPS).

A Faculty of Health Sciences team at the University of Queensland will partner the NPS research into ‘Understanding and improving prescribing practice’. Researchers from the Universities of Newcastle and NSW will work with NPS on ‘Improving the uptake of evidence based medicine information and decision support’.

Doctors’ decisions about how best to treat patients are influenced by a range of factors including the patient’s need, the availability of reliable information about the effectiveness and safety of medicines, and exposure to the opinions of colleagues, experts and pharmaceutical companies. Even with recent improvements in the dissemination and uptake of evidence into practice, there remains significant variation in prescribing practice and a resistance to changing practice among some doctors.

The NPS is an independent, non-profit organisation for Quality Use of Medicines.

It provides accurate, balanced, evidence-based information and services to help people choose if, when and how to use medicines to improve their health and wellbeing. It works in partnership with health professionals, government, pharmaceutical industry and consumers. NPS is funded by the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing.

For information visit www.nps.org.au