RESUMEN
Rational prescribing of medicines is an important aspect of drug prescribing which helps in safe and efficacious and cost-effective drug treatment for patients. WHO Prescription indicators are intended to evaluate the services provided to the population concerning the rational use of medicines. The study aims to study prescription practices and rational use of medicines in the department of Internal medicine, using WHO prescribing indicators in a tertiary care teaching institute of national importance. A total of 50 prescriptions were digitally photographed and analysed for prescription practices and rational drug use, using standard WHO core prescribing indicators. A total of 301 drugs with multiple and diverse diagnoses were used. Statistical analysis was done using SPSS 22 version. The average number of drugs per prescription was 3.48%. It was found that only 13.79% of prescriptions have generic names, whereas 27.58% of patient encounters had at least one drug from the National List of Essential Medicine, 6.8% of prescriptions have antibiotics and 0.7% of prescriptions were injections. The number of prescriptions with fixed drug combinations was 27.55%. Indicators such as percentage of the National List of Essential Medicine, fixed drug combinations and prescribing with a generic name are used. Hence, we will suggest regular prescription audit practices and conducting CMEs and training workshops for clinicians for the rational use of medicines in all healthcare settings to succeed in the rational use of medicine.
RESUMEN
BACKGROUND: Enhancing the standards of medical treatment at all levels of the healthcare delivery system can improve the quality of life in developing countries. One method to promote rational drug use is an assessment of drug use pattern based on drug use indicators. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate prescription patterns at the outpatient pharmacy of Dessie Referral Hospital and Boru Meda Hospital at Dessie town. METHODS: An institution-based retrospective cross-sectional study was conducted to assess the prescribing patterns in governmental hospitals of Dessie town from April 1 to May 30, 2019. Six hundred eligible prescriptions were selected from each hospital through a systematic random sampling technique. RESULTS: The result of this study showed that both hospitals used standard prescriptions (100%). Age (99.0%) and name (94.7%) of patients were the most commonly recorded patient information while weight, address of patients and diagnosis were recorded only in 1.1%, 39.2% and 61.3% of the studied prescription papers, respectively. A total 2409 drugs were prescribed in the 1200 prescription papers and the percentage of encounters with injection(s) and antibacterial(s) was 9.0% and 42.6%, respectively. At each hospital, all drugs were prescribed from the Ethiopian essential drug list. CONCLUSION: The present study revealed the use of standard presecription papers at both hospitals. None of the patient-related information was completely written in all prescrptions. For drug-related information, only the name of the drug was written in all prescription papers. There is also a significant deviation from the acceptable WHO standard for prescribing antibiotics.