OBJECTIVE To characterise the prescription of non-formulary drugs to children and neonates at a Brazilian teaching hospital and identify adverse drug reactions (ADRs), drug interactions, and prescription of potentially hazardous medicines. METHODS A prospective exploratory study was carried out between January and May 2011 at the general paediatric wards and paediatric oncology, paediatric in...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the effect of preconsultation C reactive protein (CRP) screening on antibiotic prescribing and referral to hospital in Norwegian primary care settings with low prevalence of serious infections. DESIGN Randomised controlled observational study at out-of-hours services in Norway. SETTING Primary care. PARTICIPANTS 401 children (0-6 years) with fever and/or respiratory ...

BACKGROUND To investigate determinants of antibiotic prescription in paediatric care, as a first step of a multilevel intervention to improve prescribing for common respiratory tract infections (RTIs) in a northern Italian region with high antibiotic prescription rate. METHODS A two-step survey was performed: in phase I, knowledge, and attitudes were explored involving all family and hospital...

BACKGROUND Prescription writing is one of the most important and basic skills that a doctor needs. Prescribing errors may have various detrimental consequences. Hence, the components of a prescription should be clearly written, free of drug related omission (incomplete prescription), commission (incorrect information) and integration errors, without nonofficial abbreviations, and fulfil the leg...

OBJECTIVES Our objectives were to describe proportion of patients with induced prescription (IP) from reference hospital, the information about diagnosis and treatment that GP get as well as their agreement with the prescription. We also analyzed the quality of IP assessed by GP's quality of prescription criteria. DESIGN Cross-sectional study. SETTING Six urban health care centers. PARTIC...