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The General Practitioner Research Group
Author(s) -
Wheatley David
Publication year - 1963
Publication title -
clinical pharmacology and therapeutics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.941
H-Index - 188
eISSN - 1532-6535
pISSN - 0009-9236
DOI - 10.1002/cpt196344542
Subject(s) - clinical trial , medicine , family medicine , point (geometry) , space (punctuation) , alternative medicine , drug trial , clinical practice , medical education , computer science , pathology , geometry , mathematics , operating system
The General Practitioner Research Group is an organization of 150 general practitioners undertaking clinical trials in Great Britain. Many diseases are treated solely by the general practitioner and he is best qualified to evaluate new drugs in these conditions. Also, different stages of the same diseases are seen in domiciliary and in institutional practice, and evaluation of therapy may be totally different in these stages. Drugs which are better tolerated from the point of view of adverse efJects and convenience of medication may become the treatment of choice in general practice. The members of the Group are classified according to their own special interests and types of practice and are divided into smaller sections of 8 to 10 for each individual trial. On occasion, the full resources of the Group may be employed when information is required on a large number of cases in a short space of time. Although the Group receives financial support from the pharmaceutical industry and academic institutions, there is no direct contact between the physicians taking part in a trial and the supplier of the drug concerned. Neither do the members of the team know one another until the end of the trial, when the results are analyzed centrally. Shortened versions of the reports of the Group are published in a regular monthly series in the Practitioner. The usual design of trial is a comparison of the new drug to a "standard" preparation, on the "double‐blind" basis, with random seleetion of patients.