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Assessment and Evaluation of Drug Information Needs of Physicians Treating Type-2 Diabetes Mellitus with Co-Existing Hypertension in a Tertiary Care Hospital

Rekha MB, Rekha MS2, and Purushotham Naidu

Diabetes mellitus with hypertension requires lifelong treatment and needs care while choosing drugs. The provision of accurate and timely drug information to health care professionals in treating such patients is an important mechanism to promote safe and effective drug therapy. This study was conducted to analyze the patient specific drug information needs of physicians treating type-2 diabetes mellitus with co-existing hypertension.A prospective, observational study in medicine department at Victoria hospital for a period of one year 6 months. The relevant data regarding patient specific queries of physicians on drug information were collected by joining physicians in Medicine outpatient and ward rounds and were analyzed. Descriptive statistical analysis has been carried out in the present study. Out of 160 patients, physicians had queries on 35% of patients. The total number of queries were 56, out of which 48(85.7%) were active and 8(14.3%) were passive. Queries on antidiabetic drug class were maximum (28.6%) followed by antihypertensives (25%). Queries on adverse drug reactions were leading (32%). Tertiary sources (53.5%) were the most commonly used drug information sources. Answers to the drug information queries were most often needed immediately (44.6%) and the mode of reply was verbal (44.6%) in most cases. Upon overall analysis it was found that, physicians are in need of drug information service during patient care of majority of patients. Most of the queries of physicians on drug information can be answered by referring to authentic drug information sources. Accompanying physicians during rounds and collecting queries is a useful method to identify and study queries arriving during patient care.