Clinicians more likely to prescribe benzodiazepine if they don’t believe in potential risks
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Patients of clinicians who believe the potential harms of benzodiazepines are low were at a greater risk of being prescribed them, survey results of primary care physicians showed in Annals of Family Medicine.
Benzodiazepines are a leading contributor to prescription drug deaths, yet the proportion of adults prescribed benzodiazepines has remained unchanged, Donovan T. Maust, MD, associate director of the geriatric psychiatry program at the University of Michigan, and colleagues wrote.
Maust and colleagues sought to identify whether clinician beliefs influence benzodiazepine prescribing. The authors identified all benzodiazepine prescribing in a 20% national sample of Medicare beneficiaries with Part D coverage.
From there, Maust and colleagues identified clinicians who prescribed benzodiazepines to at least one or more patients. They then randomly sampled 100 primary care clinicians to survey.
Of the 100 clinicians sent surveys, 61 responded. The researchers found that respondents prescribed benzodiazepines to a clinician level mean of 11.5% of patients.
A total of 62.3% of respondents said that they either disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement: “if a patient has been prescribed a benzodiazepine for years, the potential harms from continuing the benzodiazepine are low,” whereas 18% said they agreed with the statement.
Patients of clinicians who agreed with the statement were at a greater risk for being prescribed a benzodiazepine (aRR, 1.31; 95% CI, 1.01-1.17).
No other belief survey items were associated with patient-level risk of prescribing a benzodiazepine.
“Although the point estimates do not suggest that primary care clinicians’ [benzodiazepine] -related beliefs are consistently associated with patient likelihood of filling a [benzodiazepine] prescription, this pilot study shows the potential of applying this survey method to isolate key intervention targets,” Maust and colleagues wrote. “This study provides a method to inform the development of multipronged interventions to modify a variety of physician behaviors.”