Assessment of prescription pattern at the public health facilities of Lucknow district

OBJECTIVES To study the prescription pattern at the different levels of public health facilities of Lucknow district and to assess the average cost of drugs prescribed. METHODS Multi-stage stratified random sampling was done to select 1625 prescriptions of the patients attending the different level of public health facilities in Lucknow district, from August 2005 to September 2006, which was used for the development of study tools, collection of data and analysis. RESULTS The important components of prescription viz. examination findings, weight of the child, follow up visit and the signatures of the prescribers were absent in the prescriptions at the primary level. Polypharmacy was common (3.1 ± 1.6 drugs per prescription). The prescription of drugs by generic name was low (27.1%). The prescriptions at the secondary level health facilities were incomplete with respect to mentioning the suffix/prefix of the drug, full name, dose, frequency and strength of the drugs, and directions specifying the route and duration of the treatment. The average cost of drugs/prescription/day in US$ (Mean, SD) was found to be the highest at the tertiary level (0.34, 0.43), which decreased significantly at the primary level health facilities. CONCLUSION The pattern of prescription in terms of completeness and rationality was poor. There is an urgent need to improve the standards of drug prescription.