General practitioners' risk literacy and real-world prescribing of potentially hazardous drugs: a cross-sectional study

Abstract

Background: Overuse of medical care is a pervasive problem. Studies using hypothetical scenarios suggest that physicians' risk literacy influences medical decisions; real-world correlations, however, are lacking. We sought to determine the association between physicians' risk literacy and their real-world prescriptions of potentially hazardous drugs, accounting for conflicts of interest and perceptions of benefit-harm ratios in low-value prescribing scenarios.

Setting and sample: Cross-sectional study-conducted online between June and October 2023 via field panels of Sermo (Hamburg, Germany)-with a convenience sample of 304 English general practitioners (GPs).

Methods: GPs' survey responses on their treatment-related risk literacy, conflicts of interest and perceptions of the benefit-harm ratio in low-value prescribing scenarios were matched to their UK National Health Service records of prescribing volumes for antibiotics, opioids, gabapentin and benzodiazepines and analysed for differences.

Results: 204 GPs (67.1%) worked in practices with ≥6 practising GPs and 226 (76.0%) reported 10-39 years of experience. Compared with GPs demonstrating low risk literacy, GPs with high literacy prescribed fewer opioids (mean (M): 60.60 vs 43.88 prescribed volumes/1000 patients/6 months, p=0.016), less gabapentin (M: 23.84 vs 18.34 prescribed volumes/1000 patients/6 months, p=0.023), and fewer benzodiazepines (M: 17.23 vs 13.58 prescribed volumes/1000 patients/6 months, p=0.037), but comparable volumes of antibiotics (M: 48.84 vs 40.61 prescribed volumes/1000 patients/6 months, p=0.076). High-risk literacy was associated with lower conflicts of interest (ϕ = 0.12, p=0.031) and higher perception of harms outweighing benefits in low-value prescribing scenarios (p=0.007). Conflicts of interest and benefit-harm perceptions were not independently associated with prescribing behaviour (all ps >0.05).

Conclusions and relevance: The observed association between GPs with higher risk literacy and the prescription of fewer hazardous drugs suggests the importance of risk literacy in enhancing patient safety and quality of care.

Keywords: Decision making; Evidence-based medicine; Healthcare quality improvement; Medical education; Patient safety.

Figure 1. Mean differences in GPs’ NHS-recorded prescribing volumes of antibiotics, opioids, gabapentin and benzodiazepines, measured over 6 months, adjusted by patient size of GPs’ practice and their individual proportion of drug-specific prescriptions in association to their (A) level of risk literacy, (B) level of conflicts of interest and (C) perception of harms in drug-specific low-value prescription scenarios (excluding gabapentin). Error bars show standard errors (SE) of the means. *Two-sided significance at p<0.05. GPs, general practitioners; NHS, National Health Service.