ASSESSMENT OF PRESCRIPTIONS FOR ITS COMPLETENESS IN INDIA - A PROSPECTIVE STUDY
J.Sunitha
Department of Pharmacy Practice, Sri Venkateswara College of Pharmacy, R.V.S. Nagar, Chittoor - 517127, Andhra Pradesh, India.
S.Wasim Raja
Department of Pharmacy Practice, Sri Venkateswara College of Pharmacy, R.V.S. Nagar, Chittoor - 517127, Andhra Pradesh, India.
Y.Sravan Kumar
Department of Pharmacy Practice, Sri Venkateswara College of Pharmacy, R.V.S. Nagar, Chittoor - 517127, Andhra Pradesh, India.
S.Prathiba
Department of Pharmacy Practice, Sri Venkateswara College of Pharmacy, R.V.S. Nagar, Chittoor - 517127, Andhra Pradesh, India.
S.M.Azharuddin
Department of Pharmacy Practice, Sri Venkateswara College of Pharmacy, R.V.S. Nagar, Chittoor - 517127, Andhra Pradesh, India.
S.Brito Raj
Department of Pharmaceutics, Sri Venkateswara College of Pharmacy, R.V.S. Nagar, Chittoor - 517127, Andhra Pradesh, India.
Incompleteness of prescription written by the prescribers is one of the major causes of prescription errors which is inevitable and are exaggerated by human factors. Nevertheless, the epidemiological data about prescription errors in outpatients in India is still inadequate. This study was proposed to evaluate prescribing patterns and to determine the completeness of prescription written by the physicians in and around Chittoor district. A prospective study with outpatients as study subjects and carried out in a Community pharmacy setting in and around Chittoor district of Andhra Pradesh, India during Jan–Mar 2012 between 10 am to 1 pm. A separate Proforma is used to collect the details of all the parts of prescription which in basically categorized as Patient related Information, Prescriber’s information and Drug related information and they were checked for its presence and completeness. We observed that following results in total of 312 prescriptions assessed, with respect to patient related information only 49% of the patient age and only 14% of their contact details are present, similarly with respect to drug related information 66% of prescription only contain the strength of the drug prescribed and 84% contains detail of how long the medicine is to be taken. Regarding the prescribers’ information only very few i.e. about 18% of prescription contains prescribers’ stamp and in 4% of the prescription the signature is missing. These findings conclude that still there is lack of quality in prescription writing and a stringent action to be taken to reduce this prescription error to zero level. Similar study should be conducted in all the regions of India which will give a clear picture about this. The pharmacists’ role should be projected to decrease the rate of such prescription errors
3 , 1 , 2013
34 - 38