A question of confidence

'Trust me, I'm a doctor.' Well, it appears that the age-old assurance is not good enough now for many patients in Europe, with an independent survey showing that doctors are no longer considered a wholly reliable source of information on prescription medicines.

Certainly in the UK, funding constraints mean that doctors may not always be in a position to prescribe the latest or most beneficial drug. Furthermore, media coverage of latest breakthroughs in the pharmaceutical sector often leads to unrealistic expectations among patients desperately looking for the 'magic bullet' for their condition. So the failure by the doctor to prescribe the latest wonder drug – whether for financial or valid therapeutic reasons – is likely to lead to a loss of confidence on the part of the patient.

But if not the doctor, who can you trust to give you comprehensive and comprehensible information about your medication?

The majority of patients, it seems, would rather have information on their prescription drugs supplied direct by the manufacturer. Certainly the maker should know more about the product than anyone else, but commercial interests mean that the information is unlikely to be independent.

And the drug companies don't always get it right, as shown by the occasional withdrawal of a major brand name from the market or high profile court cases against manufacturers. Just last month patients in the US and the UK were deciding whether to take legal action against GlaxoSmithKline over side-effects allegedly caused by Seroxat.

The survey found that patient groups are perceived to be the most trustworthy information source of all. It is, of course, valuable to share information with others who are experiencing the same condition. Indeed it is often through such groups that hitherto unsuspected side-effects of a particular medication may come to light.

But how are patients to judge the quality and objectiveness and accuracy of information from these sources, particularly when it is disseminated through an unregulated website?

The big advantage that a doctor has over all other information sources is that in most cases, he or she will know the patient, understand the medical background and history and will have access to full medical records. Information from drug companies, on the other hand, must necessarily apply to the overwhelming majority of a large patient group rather than individuals.

Surely if we trust doctors to diagnose our illness correctly, we should also trust them to treat it to the best of their ability. They are, of course, only human – but that is ultimately why they merit our trust.