OBJECTIVES: To discover the view of primary care doctors on aspects of the safety of medicines, their knowledge of the programme of automatic notification of negative side-effects of medicines (NSEM), their opinion of the programme and factors affecting low notification. DESIGN: A survey of views. SETTING: Madrid's Health Area 1. PARTICIPANTS: General practitioners and paediatricians (n = 417). MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS: 281 doctors (67.4%) replied. 88.4% (48 + 40.4%) said they included questions on possible side-effects in the case history interview (always or almost always). 58.2% suspected at least one negative side-effect each month. CONCLUSIONS: Doctors are very interested in detecting and identifying the NSEM of their patients, and therefore believe that a centralised system to record NSEM should be set up.
OBJECTIVES: To discover the view of primary care doctors on aspects of the safety of medicines, their knowledge of the programme of automatic notification of negative side-effects of medicines (NSEM), their opinion of the programme and factors affecting low notification. DESIGN: A survey of views. SETTING: Madrid's Health Area 1. PARTICIPANTS: General practitioners and paediatricians (n = 417). MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS: 281 doctors (67.4%) replied. 88.4% (48 + 40.4%) said they included questions on possible side-effects in the case history interview (always or almost always). 58.2% suspected at least one negative side-effect each month. CONCLUSIONS: Doctors are very interested in detecting and identifying the NSEM of their patients, and therefore believe that a centralised system to record NSEM should be set up.