Erlend Hem and colleagues, from the University of Oslo in Norway, conducted a study of a sample of students from all medical schools in Norway. They assessed the students' self-prescribing behaviour by asking them to fill in a questionnaire, one year, four years and nine years after graduation from medical school. In total, 252 students responded to all three questionnaires.
Hem et al.'s results show that 69% of doctors had self-prescribed once or more in their first year after graduation. These doctors were more likely to self-prescribe later in their careers than those who hadn't self-prescribed soon after graduation. Overall 54% of respondents in their fourth or ninth year after graduation had self-prescribed in the past year. Among respondents who had used prescription medication during the previous year, 90% had self-prescribed.
There were no differences in self-prescribing between men and women or between hospital physicians and general practitioners. The most frequently self-prescribed medications were antibiotics, contraceptives, analgesics and hypnotics. Hypnotics were self-prescribed by 12.4% of the doctors in their ninth year after graduation.
It may be convenient for doctors to self-prescribe, but self-prescribing can be dangerous for various reasons: it lacks the objectivity and professional distance that usually exist between a physician and a patient, and can lead to a delay in diagnosis and in decision to treat. In addition, many conditions need follow-up, which might not be conducted properly by a doctor who self-prescribes.
Article:
Self-prescribing among young Norwegian doctors: a nine-year follow-up study of a nationwide sample
Erlend Hem, Guro Stokke, Reidar Tyssen, Nina T Gronvold, Per Vaglum and Oivind Ekeberg
BMC Medicine 2005, 3:16 (21 October 2005)
BMC Medicine