Only 3.3% of general practitioners judge the information they receive from companies through informants "always" satisfactory, and 28% "often"
The 50,5% instead appreciates it "sometimes", the 16,4% "rarely" and the 1,8% "never". These are the results of a survey by the Study Center of the Italian Federation of General Practitioners (FIMMG) conducted last November on a sample of around 1,000 professionals. those who answered "always satisfactory" by 6.4%, i.e. almost double the average, to which must be added a 37.4% of doctors who say they are "often" satisfied. Things are worse in the North, where there is lower satisfaction : in particular in the North-West just 0.5% "always" appreciates the work of the FSIs and 23.2% "often", while in the North-East the percentages are respectively 1.1% and 14.7%. Italy, on the other hand, the answers are quite in line with the average: 3.1% is "always" satisfied and 28.6% "often". Analyzing on the basis of age, the 4.5% of older doctors (from 51 years then) confesses to being "always" satisfied, against the 2,7% of the younger ones. However, this figure is not reflected in the percentage of those who are "often": in this case, younger doctors (29%) prevail over older ones (26.1%). Finally: greater appreciation by women than men: 4.8% of female doctors say they are "always" satisfied against 3.1% of colleagues. But general practitioners say they are, almost en masse, convinced that "in the coming years, the way of providing scientific information on drugs must change". The 82.5% of the sample thinks so well. As for the reasons that would lead to a different way of providing information, the 29,5% of the white coats thinks that "doctors could, for professional reasons, be less interested in communicating with the Isf as it is done today", on the 25th, 3% instead believes that "the development of IT means and online communication could make direct contact with scientific representatives less necessary". The 21,5% is convinced that "a more stringent regulation of the function and of the constraints governing the relationship between FSIs and doctors could gradually lead to the abandonment of the current model". Finally, for 6,4% "the pharmaceutical industries could, for their own reasons, change the current situation". The survey then proposes a series of possible changes. The most shared hypothesis is "a payment to the doctor of the time he dedicates to medical-scientific information" indicated by the 20% of the sample, followed by "periodic themed collective residential meetings" preferred by 10,8%, by "meetings in small instead of single visits to studios, in the offices of the associations" (13,3%), and by "meetings with small themed groups instead of single visits to studios" (7,3%). "The activity of the ISF is experienced as something routine and not as the acquisition of new and useful notions. Therefore it does not arouse great enthusiasm but, at the same time, neither aversion" commented Giacomo Milillo, national secretary of the FIMMG. From Pharmacy 33 14-02-08
