Knowledge and Perceptions of Final Year Medical Students in Iraqi Universities about Generic Medicines

Abstract

Objective: To explore and evaluate final year medical students' perceptions of and knowledge about generic medicines in Iraqi universities. Methods:A cross-sectional survey was conducted between 1 st June 2010 and 31 st July 2010 in six Iraqi public universities offering courses in medicine. Results:Responses were received from 546 medical students (response rate 69.6%).More than 60% of study participants thought that generic medicines are inferior, less effective and produce more side effects compared to brand name medicines. These findings highlight that final year medical students need a better understanding of the principles and concepts of bioavailability and bioequivalence if they are to contribute appropriately t o generic medicine use. Conclusions:This study clearly shows that medical students in Iraq lack of understanding on issues related to generic medicine use. In order to encourage the use of generic medicines in Iraq, medical students need to be receiving a better education on the issues relating to generic medicines and generic prescribing. This could be achieved by including the relevant topics in the current medical education curriculum.

Knowledge and Perceptions of Final-Year Medical Students in Yemeni Universities About Generic Medicines

“…This is in line with the studies conducted in Australia and Iraq (18,19). This may have a negative impact on the students' prescription habits while practicing upon graduation.…”

“…This could be mainly due to the lack of knowledge about these products and their relationship to each other, where 61.8% of the respondents were not introduced to the issues of bioequivalence for generic drugs during their education. Similar findings were reported for Australian and Iraqi final-year medical students (18,19), where 72.0 and 75.0% of the students did not believe that generic medicines are therapeutically equivalent to their corresponding brand medicines, respectively. Compared to only 8.7% of the respondents in the present study who showed a need for information about the bioequivalence of generic medicines during their medical education, 68.0% and 75.0% of Australian and Iraqi medical students showed such a need, respectively.…”

“…In fact, the misconceptions on generic medicines need to be reconsidered and corrected (13)(14)(15)(16)(17). Several studies in Iraq and Australia on medical students' perceptions regarding generic medicines showed that such misconceptions are attributed to misbeliefs that generic medicines are therapeutically identical to their corresponding brand medicines (18)(19). The suggested reason leading to such negative perceptions of medical students is that the generic medicine concept is not introduced clearly to those students during their undergraduate study.…”

Knowledge and perception of senior year pharmacy students about generic medicines in public Universities of Malaysia

“…[7] Majority respondents agreed that generic products rated as "generic equivalents" are therapeutically equivalent to the innovator brand product as well as to each other [2,8] but almost half of them could not answer the correct range for bioequivalence criteria set by the Drug Control Authority of Malaysia, a finding similar to previous reports. [5,9,10] In contrast to earlier reports that contradict our findings showing that respondents, more than 70% [8] and 43.3%, [11] this study showed that the majority of the respondents perceived generic medicines as bioequivalent to innovator medicines. [2] At the same time, nearly half of our respondents believed that innovator medicines are required to meet higher safety standards than generic medicines.…”

“…This reflected the deficiency in students' knowledge about pharmacokinetic parameters in establishing bioequivalence of generic medicines, although this topic had been covered in their pharmacy curricula. [2,8] This was probably due to the lack of bridging between the knowledge of bioequivalence testing to generic medicines.…”