Doctors and pharmaceutical biochemists in personalized health care with the magistral formulation.

Abstract

Introduction. The shortage of drugs, the prescription of expensive brand name drugs and the underutilization of the Pharmaceutical Biochemist's knowledge to formulate personalized drugs, reduce quality and health coverage. Objective. To learn the management given to magisterial formulations (MF) by Pharmaceutical Physicians and Biochemists (BQFs). Methodology. Descriptive, cross-sectional study, carried out in Riobamba in May and June 2018 with 101 doctors and 20 BQFs. Variables: knowledge, opinion, intention and application of the MF. Descriptive statistics, Ch2 and Likert scale analysis were obtained. Results. At α = 0.05, there is no association between types of doctors and study variables. Knowledge: 75% of doctors insufficient and regular, and 25% acceptable and excellent; 54% BQF insufficient and fair, and 46% acceptable and excellent. Opinion: For doctors, 45.29% personalization, low costs, dose flexibility and that they cover the shortage of medicines are not advantages, for 54.7% yes; disadvantages: lack of production premises, obsolete, without sanitary registration, and they are not applicable to all specialties, for 47% they are not disadvantages, for 53% they are; BQFs agree more with the advantages and less with the disadvantages. Application: 59.3% doctors prescribe very little. The BQFs: 45% elaborate very little, 80% indicate that they are prepared to elaborate them and 100% consider them a job opportunity; meanwhile, for 43% of doctors there are no professionals who prepare MF. Intention: 81.7% doctors and 97.5% BQFs wish to expand their knowledge and attend updating programs. Conclusion. Doctors prescribe very little, have little knowledge to do so, and are unaware of quality control and the variety of magisterial formulas. Most of the BQFs do not prepare them and have a lack of knowledge, especially about pharmacopoeias and legislation. Most of the patients never ask for magistral formulas.