Health professional (pharmacist, nurse and physician) awareness of drug cost: a systematic review

Globally, pharmaceutical costs are highly variable and therefore obtaining accurate and relevant costs are often very complex as plenty of similar medicines or health supplements with similar efficacy, safety and therapeutic effects being priced differently. The healthcare professionals (physician, nurse and pharmacist) have their role in alleviating patient's financial burden by being more aware of the medicine cost that they prescribe. However, there is no consistent pattern in awareness among health professional. We designed this systematic review to review health professionals (pharmacist, nurse, and physician) level of awareness regarding cost of prescription drug products as well as to identify factors influencing awareness of the drug cost. Databases that we used for our search strategy included Pubmed, MEDLINE, Scopus and Science Direct as well as reference review for any articles which related to the topics. Articles for inclusion included; those that described the awareness, understanding, concerns, perceptions or knowledge of the health professional, pharmacists, nurses or physicians towards the drug cost or medication prices; results should be described quantitatively; have a description of how "True" costs determined and must have minimum of 10 participants of respondent either health professionals or physicians or nurses or pharmacists.