[e-drug] Re: Patients behaviour when purchasing/obtaining drugs (3)

["Zhining Goh" <zhining.goh@gmail.com>]

Apart from point-of-dispensing education, pharmacists in Singapore have tied
up with the Consumer Association of Singapore (CASE www.case.org.sg) to
educate and empower patients on generic products, and to advocate generics
as a cost-saving solution especially for patients with chronic diseases.
Joint initiatives have included public forums and publication of drug
prices.

PSS Works with CASE to Empower Healthcare Consumers
http://www.pss.org.sg/main/content/view/490/

CASE Public Forum - Know Your Medicine, Understand Your Option
http://www.pss.org.sg/main/content/view/502/

Pharmacists have also contributed articles on generic medicines to the CASE
newsletter as well as to a weekly supplement on healthcare in The Straits
Times, our national newspaper. Individual institutions too have their own
initiatives. During my pre-registration training we had to produce posters
on the topic for a patient carnival at the hospital and were available
on-site during the event to answer any queries.

There is also discussion now whether to make it compulsory for GPs to
provide their patients with prescriptions to allow them to choose where they
would like to buy their medicines from, and whether to get generic or
branded products. Currently GPs are allowed to sell and dispense drugs from
their clinics and charge up to S$15 for a prescription when a patient
requests for one.

Perhaps resistance/receptivity to generic products could be due to the state
of drug counterfeiting in a country (personal opinion here). This is not a
big problem in Singapore with our extremely strict laws and requirements.
>From my experience working in public hospitals for the past six years there
isn't much resistance to generic products, especially when many of the
hospitals would stock one or another, but not both. While we may get
requests for branded products when they just go off-patent (and we start
using generics), most consumers eventually accept generics or choose to pay
more for us to bring in the branded products by special order, or to get
them from the retail pharmacies.

Due to the permissable differences in bioavailability and pharmacokinetics
between branded and generic products there will always be those who claim
that they respond better to a certain brand of a drug compared to others.

The attitude of a patient's healthcare providers (not necessarily
pharmacists) towards generic drugs may also impact on the way a patient
regard them.


Zhining Goh

Locum Pharmacist
Alexandra Hospital, Singapore
E-mail: <zhining.goh@gmail.com>

Immediate-Past Chairperson of Education and Practice
International Pharmaceutical Students' Federation (IPSF)