| Abstrak/Abstract |
Global health expenditure continues to rise annually, one of the components is medicine
use. To date, there are still a lot of controversy developed in the population regarding generic medicine. This study was aimed to explore the community pharmacists’ perception about generic medicine and their attitude towards substitution of brand-name medicine to generic. A cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted, involving 250 community pharmacists in Yogyakarta. A self-administrated anonymous
questionnaire was used as an assessment tool. A pre-validated questionnaire was delivered to the community pharmacists during September to December 2019. The questionnaire is consisted of three parts, including sociodemographic and practice characteristics, 10-item perception on generic medicines, and lastly, a-6 item statement on attitudes toward generic substitution. Data were analyzed in descriptive and inferential using logistic regression, with p-value less than 0.05 were considered significant. Most of the community pharmacists believed that generic medicine is more affordable than brand-name medicine (3.78±0.67). They believe that generic medicine has equals effectiveness (2.98±0.82), safety (3.32±1.03), and quality (3.51±1.21) with brand-name medicine. They also believed that pharmacists’ authority to switch brandname medicine towards generic medicine (3.86±0.45) and absence of interference from physicians (3.56±0.57) will give confidence to patients. Hereafter, 90% of the community pharmacists offer their
patients generic medicine, 74.8% suggest generic medicine due to patients’ economic status, and 60.8?ucate patients about switching medicine. The community pharmacists who serve insurance patients (OR 2.34; CI 1.34-3.23) or located in urban (OR 2.12; CI 1.09-3.21) or serving prescription ? 20 per day (OR
2.18; CI1.78-2.96) likely to do generic substitution. The community pharmacists’ perception regarding
generic medicine were positive. They also had a good attitude towards generic medicine substitution.
Furthermore, the obvious guideline regarding condition that allow pharmacists to substitute medicine is
needed. |
