Prescription: A Situation Analysis in Indian Health Care System (original) (raw)

Survey on legibility of prescriptions in private and government clinical setups in South India

Prescription is a written instruction by a medical practitioner that authorizes a patient to be issued with a medicine. It is a medico legal document that should be written legibly, accurately and completely in capital letters. The present study was carried out over one month period in different private and Government clinical setups in South India. Patient and drug data was recorded that contain patient particulars, diagnosis, investigations, drug details and information from the prescriber regarding the indication of prescribing agents, duration of therapy. But survey showed most of the prescriptions contains patient particulars and medications only in which 95.5% of prescriptions are unclear; unreadable; illegible which is a serious problem that may lead to dispensing errors and treatment complications.

Evaluation of Hand Written and Computerized Out-Patient Prescriptions in Urban Part of Central Gujarat

JOURNAL OF CLINICAL AND DIAGNOSTIC RESEARCH

This was a cross-sectional, observational study. Prior ethical permission was taken. Clinicians participating in study were informed about objectives of study and their written informed consent was taken. Prescriptions were collected from three local pharmacy stores of Anand city over a period of May 2008 to January 2010*. Collection of prescriptions was started a month after the consent to minimize bias in prescription writing. The prescriptions were collected in two forms-Handwritten and Computerised. Available prescriptions were either photocopies

Quality of Prescription Writing Practices in a Tertiary Care Teaching Hospital of Bihar: A Cross-Sectional Study

2020

Introduction- Prescription is an important order which is given by the doctor to their patients. For the maximum benefit of the patients the prescription order should be according to the predefined pattern. Prescribing errors are very common in clinical practice, which may cause harm to the patient rather than benefit. To reduce the prescription error and promote rational prescribing, continuous monitoring of prescription in the form of prescription audit is required. Objective- To audit the prescriptions from different OPD (Out Patient Department) in a Tertiary care teaching hospital, Patna, for its legibility and completeness. Methodology-It is descriptive cross-sectional study conducted in Out Patients Department of Tertiary care teaching hospital, Patna from 10th June 2019 to 20th July 2019. In this study Non probability purposive sampling to ensure maximum variability. Results- In this maximum number of prescriptions collected from Medicine department (21.5%). The average num...

Prescription Writing: The Forgotten Art

2016

Prescription is one of the most important therapeutic transactions between a physician and a patient. Prescription errors contribute to a significant rise in adverse events. These errors in prescribing can be classified into; physician-related or drug-related errors. The present study was conducted to assess the extent of noncompliance with prescription writing requirements. This cross sectional study was conducted in the Moradabad city in Uttar Pradesh state, India, in the month of November 2012. Prescriptions were collected for 15 days from out-patient departments of private hospitals, district hospital and drug stores on Probability Proportional to Enrolment size (PPE) in the Moradabad city after acquiring a verbal consent from prescription holders. All prescriptions were assessed retrospectively. The significance of differences was sought using Mann–Whitney U tests. Out of 736 prescriptions, 586 prescriptions were selected which included 442 Medical and 144 Dental prescriptions....

Audit of prescription notes from a tertiary health centre, AIMS, BG Nagar, India: a cross-sectional study

International Journal of Research in Medical Sciences, 2015

Background: Prescription is a written order from physician to pharmacist which contains name of the drug, its dose and its method of dispensing and advice over consuming it. The frequencies of drug prescription errors are high. Prescription error contributes significantly towards adverse drug events. The present study was undertaken to understand the current prescription writing practices and to detect the common errors in them at a tertiary health care centre situated in BG Nagar, Mandya, Karnataka, India. Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted in Adichunchanagiri Institute of medical Sciences, BG nagar, Mandya, India during April-May 2015. 187 prescriptions were analyzed. Important information regarding the patient, doctor, drug and the general description of the prescription were obtained. Results: All the prescriptions were on the hospital pad. A significant number of the prescriptions were written in illegible (11%) or barely legible (20%) handwriting. The name, age and sex of the patient were not mentioned in majority of the prescriptions. All the prescriptions (100%) failed to demonstrate the presence of address, height and weight of the patient. Brand name of the drugs was mentioned in all the prescriptions with only 8% of them having the generic name. The quantity, dose and medicinal form were found missing in 1.7%, 29.5%, and 2.2% of the prescriptions. Conclusions: The findings of our study show that there is a need for improvement in the quality of prescriptions written by the doctors. The adoption of a computer aided prescribing system would go a long way in achieving this objective.

Introducing a structured prescription form improves the quality of handwritten prescriptions in limited resource setting of developing countries

Journal of evaluation in clinical practice, 2016

Incomplete or illegible prescriptions can lead to serious errors in administration of the prescribed medication, which can become hazardous. Our aim is to determine if a structured prescription form can improve the quality of handwritten prescription in terms of completeness and legibility. We conducted a prospective, non-randomized, time series study of quality of written prescriptions of general practitioners at a tertiary teaching hospital in Peshawar, Pakistan. The study involved an intervention, composed of the introduction of a pre-printed structured prescription form. The data were collected within 4 weeks including a 2-week pre-intervention phase and 2-week post-intervention phase. Completeness, quality of prescriptions and legibility were compared before and after the intervention of the pre-printed structured prescription form. A total of 463 prescriptions were obtained (260 in the pre-intervention phase and 203 in the post-intervention phase). Between pre-intervention pha...

Assessment of Prescribing Trends and Quality of Handwritten Prescriptions from Rural India

2015

Drugs are an integral part of the health care system has and have a vital role in maintaining human health and saving mankind. Lacunae in the availability of drug use information worldwide suggest that drug use is suboptimal [1]. To make drug use more compliantand acceptable, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the National Health Policy of India have emphasized that essential drugs should be prescribed by generic names [2-4]. Drugs that are used extensively to meet the health care needs of the population that should be available at all times in adequate quantities and in appropriate dosage forms, at an affordable price, are called essential drugs [5-8]. The Indian drug market is flooded with thousands of formulations although only about 350 drugs are listed in the WHO essential drug list. Pharmaceutical companies promote prescription of branded medicines, which results in irrational drug practices. Among the various drug products available for use in India, just 10% are suffici...

Prescription Writing Skills of Doctors Practicing in Dhule City of Maharashtra State: A Cross Sectional Survey

Indian Journal of Pharmacy Practice

Objective: Due concern growing regarding incomplete or illegible prescriptions, the present survey was undertaken to assess the prescription writing skills of doctors practicing in Dhule city. Material and methods: 286 prescriptions dispensed by various doctors were collected for 5 consecutive days from 5 randomly selected pharmacy shops in Dhule city, Maharashtra state, India. The prescriptions were photocopied and returned to the patients. Collected prescriptions were assessed for patient's information, doctor's information and their legibility using predefined criteria by a calibrated examiner. The collected data was analyzed and presented as percentage and frequencies. Results: All the collected prescriptions were lacking one or more aspects of patient's as well as doctor's details. About 23.4% prescriptions had poor legibility and 21.3% prescriptions lacked details about more than one drug. Conclusion: The quality and nature of prescriptions written in Dhule city is substandard and it requires use of a standardized prescription format to be used. Also regarding legibility, computerization can be the answer to the problem.