Contraceptive prescription: physician beliefs, attitudes and socio-demographic characteristics.

Physicians are important gatekeepers of women's access to effective methods of contraception. An understanding of physician behaviour in this domain is therefore important. This cross-sectional survey examined physician beliefs, attitudes, intentions and behaviour with respect to contraceptive prescription. Physician gender was associated with attitudes to diaphragm prescription, while year of medical graduation was associated with attitude to IUCD prescription. Age and gender in turn were related to differing perceptions of methods pertaining to efficacy, adverse effects, women for whom the methods were suitable and possible impacts on the physician. Regional differences in prescribing of these methods may be due to variations in physician age and gender.