Rational prescribing and sources of information.

The hypothesis that prescribing rationality is related to physician rather than patient characteristics was investigated and the relationship between prescribing rationality and the use of different sources of drug information and age of the General Practitioner was examined. Prescribing rationality was assessed by a panel of experts with the case-history method. Data on the use of different sources of information were collected in a follow-up interview. One hundred sixteen (116) General Practitioners in Twente (a region in the east of the Netherlands) cooperated in the study. It was found that prescribing rationality is a physician characteristic. Younger General Practitioners prescribe in a more rational way than their older colleagues and this is partly reflected in the patterns of obtaining information. None of the studied professional sources of information seemed to have a great impact on prescribing rationality, with the exception of reliance on general medical journals instead of on drug oriented journals as a source of drug-information. This was negatively associated with prescribing rationality as well as reliance on the information of drug firms.