Exploring Patient, Physician, and Pharmacist Perspectives on the Substitution of Branded Medications with Generics in Community Pharmacies: A Comparative Analysis

This paper evaluates the influence of a number of factors taken into account when a branded drug is replaced by a generic. It also assesses the responses of healthcare professionals - doctors and pharmacists -and patients on the issue of replacing the two classes of medicines. We compared their responses to identify new points of cooperation for the desired benefit of the patient. Thus, we extracted information from all three groups, consisting of 10 doctors, 10 pharmacists and 50 patients. We gathered information on age, residence, income level and education level for patients, as well as age and experience of specialists. Based on the survey responses, replacing the original drug with a generic one raises many issues, such as lack of information for the patient and specialist, lack of collaboration between doctor and pharmacist, ineffective communication between specialist and patient, and the influence of the general problem related to profit.