Background: Recent research has shown that patients' expectations for prescriptions influence doctors' prescribing decisions, but little is known of the antecedents of these expectations.
Objectives: To test earlier qualitative research about patients' views of medicines; to describe the demographic characteristics of those holding orthodox and unorthodox views of medicines; to investigate the relationship between patients' ideal and predicted expectations for prescriptions; and to determine the relative effects of attitudinal, demographic, organizational and illness variables on these expectations.
Design: Questionnaire survey of patients consulting general practitioners.
Setting and participants: A total of 544 patients and 15 doctors in four general practices.
Main variables studied: Patients' attitudes to medicines; patients' demographic characteristics; organizational variables; aspects of patients' presenting problems.
Outcome measures: Patients' ideal and predicted expectations for prescriptions.
Results: Orthodox and unorthodox attitudes to medicines can be measured quantitatively, and ethnicity was the only demographic variable associated with both. Ideal and predicted expectations for prescriptions were closely related to each other but differed in their antecedents. Both types of expectations were associated with attitudinal, demographic, organizational and illness variables. Ideal expectations were influenced by orthodox and unorthodox attitudes to medicines, while predicted expectations were only influenced by orthodox attitudes.
Conclusions: Future studies of patients' expectations for health services should distinguish between ideal and predicted expectations, and should consider the range of possible influences on these expectations. In particular, the effect of the organization and context of health services should be investigated.