[e-drug] Medical doctors & belief in brand names (7)

e-drug
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E-DRUG: Medical doctors & belief in brand names (7)
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Dear E-Drug

I have heard varied tales of prescribers insisting on brand names over
generics.
I am wondering that part of the contributory factor is due to a lack of
knowledge of pharmacokinetics.
My personal experience was when at our hospital we changed brand of 2
parenteral injections - BuscopanR and LasixR - to generics.

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E-DRUG: Medical doctors & belief in brand names (9)
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Wong Wai See wrote:

Question - do medical school teach principles of pharmacokinetics?

I think the curricula vary between countries and over time, and even between universities in teh same country during the same period.

When I studied medicine in Munich, Germany, 2 semesters of biochemistry plus 2 semsters of clinical pharmacology were mandatory, and many of us did extra work in pharmacology too.

Now I work in Australia as rural General Parctitioner and I have the
impression that most of my colleagues did not have the benefit of firm
biochemical and pharmacological grounding and hence are vulnerable towards
irrational prescribing habits (but they have been trained better in clinical examination skills than I had - guess you can only cram so much into 6 years of study)

Horst
--
Dr Horst Herb
Principal
Dorrigo Medical Centre
Dorrigo, NSW 2453 AUSTRALIA
horst at dorrigomedical . com
subscriptions@gnumed.net