This study examines the relationship between health beliefs and the use of both prescribed medication and alternative healing agents among at least one year diagnosed hypertensives attending an hypertension out-patient clinic in a rural South African hospital. The sample included 33 men and 67 women, in the age range of 31 to 81 years, (M=60.7 years, SD=9.8 years). Main outcome measures include...

Antidepressant prescription for youths has recently been on the increase. There is a growing concern over the increasing off-label usage of antidepressants. Current data on off-label antidepressant usage vary across countries and healthcare systems. Therefore, we examined the extent and pattern of antidepressant prescription for Korean children and adolescents using population-based data. Our d...

Electronic prescription management has failed to sufficiently improve physician’s knowledge of a patient’s current and previous medications. Additionally, prescription management methods have failed at encouraging patients to adhere to medications. Between medication errors resulting from incomplete medication histories and poor patient adherence to drug regimens, significant challenges remain ...

Prescription opioids have increasingly been involved in overdose deaths and treatment admissions. Disposal programs may play an important role in curbing this trend. The objectives of this study were to: (1) quantify the prescription opioids returned for disposal to a local take-back program, and (2) explore selected drug characteristics that may predict the quantity of unused opioids. Leftover...

OBJECTIVES We investigated incidence rates to understand the nature of medication errors potentially introduced by utilizing a computerized physician order entry (CPOE) system in the three clinical phases of the medication process: prescription, administration, and documentation. METHODS Overt observations and chart reviews were employed at two surgical intensive care units of a 950-bed terti...

Banerjee and Bhadury have presented a helpful insight into the prescribing pattern of interns in a primary health center in India.[1] The results that emerge are not entirely positive. Clearly, there are many areas where improvements need to be made to prescribing. For example, the frequency of drug administration was not mentioned in all prescriptions, nor was the intended duration of therapy ...

BACKGROUND Prescription review by pharmacists prior to dispensing is an important step in an overall strategy for preventing medication errors. Contacts with prescribers may be required to clarify missing, unclear, or inconsistent information. While essential to reduce the likelihood of potential patient harm, clarification contacts are time-consuming for pharmacists and prescribers. The scope ...

Prevention of medication errors in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) is of paramount importance due to age-specific and physiological conditions of neonates. This study aimed to evaluate the risk of medication prescription and administration via failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA), which was carried out at the Research and Medical Teaching Center of Imam Reza Hospital in Mashhad, Iran....

In 2004, the Federal Government introduced the "Farmácia Popular do Brasil" Program, which was an example of policy innovation, establishing a co-payment scheme as a strategy for access to medication. The study analyzed the original model of the Program. Data were obtained from interviews with key stakeholders, program documents and user prescriptions and registers. The results showed widesprea...