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| Section home → | Benefits for patients & → practitioners | Hypnotic prescribing → | Patient & practitioner → views | How we developed → the evidence | Self Assessment |
Practitioner beliefs about sleep
→ GPs did not like prescribing drugs but were not sure what else they could do or how to do this
→ Compared to anxiety where GPs tended to use or refer for psychological treatments for insomnia, drugs were often an early choice of treatment, particularly Z drugs over benzodiazepine hypnotics
→ GPs positive to initiatives to reduce inappropriate prescribing
→ GPs felt that prescribing hypnotics was appropriate in some circumstances. Overall GPs did not like prescribing hypnotics, particularly long term. However, whereas they tended to use psychological treatments for anxiety they often resorted to drugs for insomnia. They liked Z-drugs because they through they were more effective, less likely to cause side effects, tolerance and addiction – although there was little evidence for these beliefs. They were positive to initiatives to reduce inappropriate hypnotic prescribing.