Emergency Medicine Clinicians Reported Pregnancy Related Drug Information Resources

Purpose: To determine what references ED clinicians use to retrieve teratogenicity information, determine likelihood of prescribing a category A, B, C, D or X drug, and to ascertain their awareness of available pregnancy-related drug information resources.

Methods: A survey was administered to each ED clinician. The survey ascertained the top three drug information references clinicians routinely use in clinical practice; clinicians willingness to prescribe a category A, B, C, D or X drug using a 5 point Likert scale (strongly disagree to strongly agree); and clinician selected from a list of electronic and print resources those that he/she considered available to him/her in the ED to find pregnancy-related drug prescribing information.

Results: To date, Forty-nine ED clinicians with a median of 2.5 years (range 1-38) in the profession filled out the survey. Seventy four percent are male, and 54% are residents practicing in both the adult and pediatric EDs. Nineteen percent of the clinicians stated that they would be willing to prescribe Category C drugs, yet 66% of the most commonly utilized drugs in the ED are Category C. The most commonly used references include Micromedex®, Tarascon Pocket Pharmacopoeia, and Epocrates® (34%, 23% and 16%, respectively). Among the 63% pregnancy-specific drug information references that are available in our EDs, less than 24% of clinicians stated that these references are available to them.

Conclusion: Education on the appropriate use of category C drugs and references containing detailed pregnancy information is warranted.