Study of Prescribing Patterns of Common Health Problems

Prescribing practices are a reflection of health professional’s abilities to discriminate among the various choices of drugs and determine the ones that will most benefit their patients The main objectives of the study include understanding the prescribing behaviour of physicians, evaluate average cost per prescription, educate the patients regarding their medication and health status and to promote rational use of drugs for achieving better patient outcomes The study was conducted in three outpatient clinics which include Aparna Clinic, Chaitanya Clinics, Warangal from March 2011 to May 2011 with patients of either sex attended that clinic. The prescription written by the physicians were collected and the original prescription was used for data collection. A total of 677 prescriptions were collected from three outpatient clinics. Out of 677 patients 56.6 % were males and 43.4 % were females with age ranging from 31 years to 80 years. Among 677 patients, fever/Cold/Cough was found to be more common due to climatic conditions and seasonal variations. On an average 2.46 (Mean± SD of 2.46±0.9) drugs were prescribed per prescription. The patients were also educated regarding the medication use and hypertensive and diabetic patients were educated regarding their life style modifications by providing information in the form of Patient Information leaflets. There is an ample scope of improving the prescribing pattern by keeping the number of medicines as low as possible, prescribing medicines by official names, using medicines appropriately after selecting and consciously keeping the cost of therapy low. Hence, the clinical pharmacist must be considered to be an integral part of the multidisciplinary healthcare team. They should be involved in collection and presentation of prescribing data as part of clinical audit. All attempts to enhance quality of prescribing should be encouraged as also education of patients / caretakers remains crucial.