A Study of Drug Prescribing Practices at a Tertiary Care Hospital

Objectives: To study the drug prescribing practices at a tertiary care hospital using some of the WHO core drug prescribing indicators. Materials and Methods: The study was conducted at a tertiary care hospital in Goa, in the year 2008. Drug prescriptions were randomly selected from the out-patient pharmacy of the hospital. Fifty prescriptions were selected per month, over a period of one year and a total of 600 drug prescriptions were studied. Data collection was done with the help of a pretested predesigned format. The data was entered in an excel spreadsheet to prepare a database. WHO drug use core indicators for out-patient facilities were used to study the various drug prescribing practices. Results: The average number of drugs per prescription was 2.9. Around 6.38 percent of the drugs which were prescribed were antibiotics, 2.58 percent of the drugs were injections, only 13.34 percent of drugs were prescribed with generic names and 60.98 percent of drugs were from the essential list of drugs. Conclusions: Periodic appraisal of drug prescribing practices at a health facility would eventually help to promote rational drug use.