A new systematic review, published in Drug Safety, examines the impact of various methods of communicating drug risks on prescribers’ awareness and understanding of those risks, as well as whether prescribing behaviors change as a result.
The current work, led by Lucy T. Perry from the University of Sydney in Australia, finds that while a few strategies are somewhat successful in reducing adverse drug reaction rates, improving service user health, and improving awareness around drug risks, “no one content or dissemination intervention was wholly effective.”
This research raises questions around drug risk and how prescribers understand and react to interventions designed to improve service users’ health by reducing adverse drug reactions and improper prescriptions. While some strategies can change prescriber behavior to an extent, included studies still showed large percentages of inappropriate prescriptions, in some cases as high as 85%, despite the availability of alerts, risk assessment tools, and educational interventions.
The review highlights a systemic issue: when clinicians fail to receive or act on safety information, informed consent is compromised, and patients remain vulnerable to avoidable harm.
The authors write:
“This systematic review found evidence that the dissemination and the content of medicine risk communications can affect clinicians’ awareness, knowledge, and associated behaviours. Initial evidence supported the impact of content and dissemination of these risk communications to clinicians on patient health outcomes. Most studies of content interventions (8/10) and dissemination interventions (8/10) changed prescribing or clinical assessment and monitoring behaviours. “
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