ISSN: 0973-7510

E-ISSN: 2581-690X

Research Article | Open Access
Mukesh Sharma1, Nikhil Payal1, Leimapokpam Sumitra Devi1, Divya Gautam2, Manisha Khandait1, Kapil Hazarika3 and Moumita Sardar1
1Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Medicine & Health Sciences, SGT University, Gurugram – 122 006, Haryana, India.
2Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Letterkenny University Hospital, Letterkenny, Co. Donegal, F92 AE81, Ireland.
3Department of Pharmacology, Faculty of Medicine & Health Sciences, SGT University, Gurugram – 122 006, Haryana, India.
J Pure Appl Microbiol. 2021;15(4):1931-1939 | Article Number: 6926
https://doi.org/10.22207/JPAM.15.4.14 | © The Author(s). 2021
Received: 10/03/2021 | Accepted: 20/09/2021 | Published: 15/10/2021
Abstract

Evidence concerning prescription audits conducted in developing countries like India is scarce, especially from the rural parts of the country. Therefore, the present prescription audit was undertaken in a rural tertiary care hospital to investigate prescriptions for their completeness, in format of prescription, legibility of writing and it was assessed against the World Health Organization (WHO) recommendation of core indicators for prescription writing in order to investigate the rational usage of drugs. A total of 200 prescriptions were randomly selected, irrespective of clinical departments, patient characteristics and diagnosis over a period of six months. All the prescriptions were prospectively analyzed and conferred to an assessment of the quality of prescribing practice, general details, medical components, WHO core drug use indicators and legibility. Amongst the 200 prescriptions precisely monitored, we found that 100% prescriptions had general details of the patients such as name, age, gender, OPD/IPD registration number, hospital name & address and consulting unit/department. While evaluating the handwriting of the doctors, 83.5% (177/200) of the prescriptions had legible handwriting, wherein the degree of legibility showed 68.5% (137/200) prescriptions with easy legibility, 20% (40/200) difficult legibility while 11.5% (23/200) were illegible. Along with the different types of drugs obtained from the selected prescriptions, we found that antibiotics were prescribed in 51.5% (103/200) of the prescriptions. A prescription audit is a good tool to systemically review the day to day work, maintenance of records and assessment of accuracy of the diagnosis given by doctors and also the outcome of the treatment received.

Keywords

Prescription audit, tertiary care hospital, legibility, antibiotics

Article Metrics

Article View: 3130

Share This Article

© The Author(s) 2021. Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License which permits unrestricted use, sharing, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.