Knowledge and perception regarding clinical trials among doctors of government medical colleges: A questionnaire-based study

AIMS: By virtue of being a specialized field by itself, the science of clinical trials (CTs) may not be well understood by doctors who are not specifically trained in it. A lack of knowledge may translate to a negative perception toward CT. With the idea of getting a situational snapshot, we estimated the knowledge and perception of CTs among doctors from government medical colleges of West Bengal who are not trained on CT in their postgraduate curriculum. Several determinants of knowledge and perception regarding CT were also evaluated. METHODS: We have quantified the knowledge and perception of CTs by a structured validated questionnaire. Development and validation of the questionnaire was performed prior to the study. RESULTS: Among 133 participants, 7.5% received focused training on CT and 16.5% participated in CTs as investigators. Majority of the doctors were unfamiliar with the basic terminologies such as, “adverse event” and “good clinical practice.” Encouragingly, 93.3% doctors advised that a detailed discussion of CT methodology should be incorporated in the under graduate medical science curriculum. They had an overall positive attitude toward CTs conducted in India, with a mean score that is 72.6% of the maximum positive score. However, a large number of the doctors were skeptical about the primary motivation and operations of pharmaceutical industry sponsored CTs, with 45% of them believing that patients are exploited in these sponsored CTs. CONCLUSION: Participant doctors had a basic knowledge of CT methodology. The study has revealed specific areas of deficient knowledge, which might be emphasized while designing focused training on CT methodology.