Evaluation & the Health Professions / June 2003

The authors sent a questionnaire to 772 ran-domly selected Danish clinicians and asked them about their use of placebo interventions. Sixty-five percent responded. Among the gen-eral practitioners, 86 % (95 % confidence interval 81-91) reported to have used placebo interventions at least once, and 48 % (41-55) to have used placebo interventions more than ten times, within the last year. Hospital-based doctors and private specialists reported to have used placebo interventions less fre-quently (p <.001). The most important reason for the use of placebo interventions was to avoid a confrontation with the patient. Typical placebos were antibiotics for viral infections. Approximately 30 % (28-36) of the clinicians believed in an effect of placebo interventions on objective outcomes, and 46 % (42-50) found clinical placebo interventions gener-ally ethically acceptable