General practitioners' views on recent and proposed medicine switches from POM to P

Aim: To determine GP attitudes to continued and proposed deregulation of medicines from POM to P status. 

Design: Self-administered postal survey. 

Subjects and setting: 435 GPs from five randomly chosen PCTs in England. 

Results: A usable response rate of 31% was obtained. Over the past 12 years GP attitudes have become more accepting of medicines being available OTC. GPs favoured the recent deregulation of all products used on the survey instrument, ranging from a low of 52% (n = 69) for clobetasone to a high of 89% (n = 119) for emergency hormonal contraception. Furthermore, the longer a product had been available OTC the more likely GPs were to accept its deregulation. GPs also had positive views about new therapeutic classes being deregulated (eg, triptans, 61%). The deregulation of medicines for chronic disease was strongly opposed by GPs with little support for any medicine or condition listed; the major concern was the lack of adequate patient monitoring.

Conclusion: GPs favoured reclassification of medicines that treated acute illnes but were opposed to medicines being available to treat chronic illness.