A STUDY OF PRESCRIPTION AUDIT IN OUTPATIENT DEPARTMENT OF A TERTIARY CARE TEACHING HOSPITAL IN INDIA: AN OBSERVATIONAL STUDY
Abstract
Background: The quality of life can be improved by enhancing the standards of the medical treatment at all levels of the healthcare delivery system. A medical audit oversees the observance of these standards. Prescription Audit offers the most comprehensive overview of performance, detailing parameter as per the check list of prescription audit.
Aim: To monitor, evaluate and suggest modifications (if necessary) in the prescribing practices of medical practitioners.
Methods: The observational study was conducted over a period of 6 months and data were collected from 1093 prescriptions collected from outpatient department of a tertiary care teaching hospital in India.
Results: Total 1093 prescriptions were evaluated for the Audit, out of which 56.4% were Male & 43.6% were Female cases. Majority of the study subjects belonged to the age group of 40-59 years (32.4%). During the study mainly twelve parameter were assessed according to the checklist provided by the Hospital with total 1093 samples of prescription audit, only 2.2 % (280) cases had the non –compliance, 64.5% (8464) cases had compliance and 33.3% (4372) not applicable to this parameters.
Conclusion: The results obtained from the study shows the prevailing prescribing habits at our institution. Many of the prescribing trends from this study are a cause of concern and need attention. This study reveals that the auditing of prescription in terms of rationality, it remains poor. The value of such audits in generating and testing hypotheses on inappropriate prescribing will definitely create an intervention to improve prescribing habits and ultimately patient care will be improved.
Keywords: Prescription Auditing, Outpatient department, Tertiary care teaching hospital, Compliance & non-compliance.
Â
Downloads
References
2. Hussain S, Parveen Z, Gupta S, Kumar D, Gupta R, Thakur S. A study of prescription auditing in rural health care setting of north India. Int J Med Sci Public Health 2016; 5: 2461-65.
3. Fresle DA, Wolfheim C (1997). Public education in rational drug use: a global survey. Geneva, World Health Organization.
4. Hepler CD, Strand LM. Opportunities and responsibilities in pharmaceutical care. Am J Hosp Pharm. 1990; 47(3):533-43.
5. Curtis P. Medical audit in general practice. J R Coll Gen Pract. 1974; 24(146):607-11.
6. Patterson HR. The problems of audit and research. J R Coll Gen Pract. 1986; 36(286):196.
7. Jyoti N, Kaur S. To analyze the Impact of Serial Prescription Audits with Active Feedback on Quality of Prescription Behaviour. J Clin Diagn Res. 2013; 7(4):680-83.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0). that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).