OBJECTIVES Some hospitals have implemented computerized physician order entry (CPOE) systems to reduce the medical error rates. However, research in this area has been very limited, especially regarding the impact of CPOE use on the reduction of prescribing errors. Moreover, the past studies have dealt with the overall impact of CPOE on the reduction of broadly termed "medical errors", and they...

BACKGROUND Commercial sources of information are known to have greater influence than scientific sources on general practitioners' (GPs) prescribing behavior in under developed and developing countries. The study aimed to determine the self-reported impact of pharmaceutical promotion on the decision-making process of prescription of GPs in Eastern Turkey. METHODS A cross-sectional, explorator...

Background: prescribing is the first and foremost component in the process of using drugs. Hence, it is a vital element in rational drug use. The concept of rational prescribing requires that the prescriber follows correct and complete prescription writing. Prescribing errors may have various detrimental consequences. Hence, the components of a prescription should be clearly written, free of dr...

An evidence based or “rational” approach to prescribing is thought to maximise the benefit and minimise the harm from prescription drugs. Unfortunately, prescribing often does not meet this ideal despite clinicians’ best intentions. We use treatment of chronic tophaceous gout to show how apparently irrational prescribing arises from several interacting “failures” in both clinical practice and d...

Prescriptions comprising multi-drug therapy mostly illustrate the prescribing error. The phenomenon of error is bonded with human inaccuracy. The erroneous practice is observed in under developed countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh and also in developed ones. Consequently drug-drug interaction is one of the most common error associated with potentially serious adverse response even death. Accor...

Background: Patients with allergies can be protected from potentially life threatening harm by recording their allergen and reaction correctly. Electronic prescribing is being widely implemented with a view to improving patient safety; decision support functions can alert prescribers to the risk of prescribing an allergen. However the allergen must be correctly recorded to utilize this function...

BACKGROUND UK National Dementia Strategies prioritise fair access to dementia treatments for the whole population. We investigated for the first time inequalities in NHS national dementia prescribing and how they have varied between UK countries and over time. METHOD we investigated the association between Townsend deprivation score and anti-dementia drug prescribing in 77,045 dementia patien...

BACKGROUND Antidepressant prescribing is increasing worldwide, prompting policy interventions and targets to halt the rise. AIM To examine time trends in GP antidepressant prescribing using patient-level data. DESIGN AND SETTING Longitudinal population database of all community pharmacy dispensed prescriptions for all 325,000 residents of the Tayside region of Scotland. METHOD In each of ...

BACKGROUND Rational prescribing is a primary step to ensure rational drug use. Often, half of the medicines are prescribed irrationally and half of these are even used incorrectly as the patients fail to take their medicines appropriately. The aim of this research was to evaluate drug-prescribing patterns of four hospitals in southern Ethiopia. METHODS A retrospective cross-sectional study wa...

This study uses the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (2006-2010) and Health Tracking Physician Survey (2008) to study the incentives and characteristics that explain physician generic prescribing habits. The findings can be characterized into four main categories: (1) financial/economic, (2) informational, (3) patientdependent and (4) drug idiosyncratic effects. Physicians in practices o...