Communicating drug risk to physicians: Challenges and opportunities

Abstract

Improving drug risk communication is a public health priority outlined by The Institute of Medicine to ensure patient safety. Physicians are an important audience of drug risk communication and effective communication is essential for promoting their adoption of risk management behavior. In this study, the authors explored information sources physicians prefer for keeping their drug safety knowledge current (particularly regarding new warnings). In a sample of US physicians, the authors found multiple resources were used for drug safety information with no single source used by everyone. Respondents had created a customized set of preferred resources with built-in redundancy. Participants discussed the strengths and limitations of different information sources: scientific (e.g., highest credibility), third-party (e.g., fast and electronically-delivered, but patients have access to the same information) and the drug company (e.g., legally accurate, but biased). The findings highlight the challenge in delivering a consistent, timely, and persuasive drug risk message to physicians through varying layers of intermediary messengers. The authors propose a conceptual framework of the communication flow for drug safety warnings to inform future research to optimize risk communication delivery.