Evaluation of prescribing pattern of the private practitioners by the undergraduate medical students

To sensitize the fourth year undergraduate medical students about rational prescribing, 600 prescriptions of private practitioners were collected by them and analyzed using WHO/INRUD indicators. There were average 3.81 drugs per prescriptions. Drugs were prescribed in generic name only in 5 prescriptions. About 50% drugs were prescribed from the Essential Drug List; only 17.5% of prescriptions were complete in respect to patient medical information. Antibiotics were prescribed in 72.5% of the prescriptions; injections were prescribed in about 12.1% of the prescriptions. Although the exercise revealed few elementary aspects of the prescribing, the medical students participated in the exercise enthusiastically and perhaps understood the issues related to rational prescribing effectively.