PRESCRIPTION PATTERN IN TERTIARY CARE HOSPITAL

*Pankil S. Pathak, Dr. Indermeet Singh Anand and Dr. Viral A. Prajapati

ABSTRACT

Objective: To study the prescription pattern in tertiary care hospital and analysing the prescription as per WHO prescribing indicators. Methods: An appraisal of 185 prescriptions was done to analyse patient‘s age, gender, diagnosis, categories and number of medicines prescribed, dosage, frequency and route of administration. Along with baseline demographic data, the total number and categories of drugs prescribed, percentage of individual drugs in each category, their dosage forms, percentage of drugs prescribed by generic name and drugs prescribed from essential drug list were analysed. Results: The average number of drugs prescribed per prescription was found to be10.58 which was extremely higher than the standard value (1.6 – 1.8). 40.0% of the prescriptions has less than 10 drugs per prescription, 39.46% prescriptions contained more than 11 drugs per prescription and 20.54% prescriptions had between 10 and 11 drugs per prescription. It was observed that majority of the drugs prescribed were by brand names 97.18% (n=1902) while only 2.82% (n = 55) drugs were prescribed by generic name. Conclusions: The prescribing pattern shows deviation from WHO prescribing indicators. The prescribing practices were not appropriate as they consist of polypharmacy, lesser prescription by generic name and lack of knowledge of the EDL. Implementing of standard treatment guidelines, hospital formulary, and regular knowledge update programs and utilizing the services of a clinical pharmacist may be of benefit.

Keywords: Prescription pattern, Tertiary care hospital, Antibiotics, Rout of Drugs Administration, Therapeutic index.