Characteristics of general practitioners who frequently see drug industry representatives: national cross sectional study.

We sent a questionnaire to all general practitioners in 200 English practices randomly selected from three groups defined as the bottom, middle, and top fifths of prescribing costs. The questionnaire elicited general practitioners’ personal and practice characteristics and their agreement with a series of statements about their prescribing attitudes and behaviour. Full details of the methods have been published. In all, 1097 of the 1714 general practitioners (64%) responded. We included the responses to each statement in a set of univariable logistic regression models in which the dependent variable was whether the general practitioner reported seeing drug representatives at least once a week. The table shows the statements that were significant (P < 0.05) in the univariate analysis. We entered these variables into a multivariable logistic regression model together with nine general practitioner and practice variables. This model found that frequent contact with a drug representative was significantly associated with a greater willingness to prescribe new drugs and to agree to patients’ requests to prescribe a drug that is not clinically indicated, dissatisfaction with consultations ending in advice only, and receptiveness to drug advertisements and promotional literature from drug companies (table).