BACKGROUND An essential medicine (EM) system has been implemented in China to reduce patients' financial burden and to make the use of drugs more rational. This study aims to evaluate the current state of the EM system in Guangdong Province. METHODS We conducted surveys in 21 cities in 2012, covering 98 medical institutions, 1,509 doctors, 17 medicine manufacturers, and 17 distribution compan...

In the computerized prescription order entry system, it has been pointed out that a physician's input mischoice for medicine is one of the causes of medication errors. We therefore investigated the input mischoices by physicians at the time of writing prescriptions. Subsequently, the number of input characters in a prescription order was changed to three characters from two characters. Furtherm...

Resistance to antibiotics is a worldwide concern and community pharmacies can play a strategic role in controlling this issue through rationalizing antibiotic consumption. Considering that dispensing any type of antibiotics without a prescription is prohibited in according to Iran’s regulations, this study was conducted to quantify the rate of antibiotic dispensing without a prescription by pha...

Resistance to antibiotics is a worldwide concern and community pharmacies can play a strategic role in controlling this issue through rationalizing antibiotic consumption. Considering that dispensing any type of antibiotics without a prescription is prohibited in according to Iran’s regulations, this study was conducted to quantify the rate of antibiotic dispensing without a prescription by pha...

Background The World Health Organization (WHO) aims to promote strategies that ensure efficacy, safety, suitability, and cost effectiveness of medicine prescription. Health systems should design effective mechanisms to monitor prescription and rational use of medicines at all healthcare settings. This study aimed to determine and analyze prescription patterns of general practitioners and specia...

OBJECTIVE Discussing the effects of Ziyinqingre prescription on the level of airway resistance (Rrs), airway response threshold (Dmin), airway conductance (sGrs) and the level of inflammatory cytokines interleukin-4 (IL-4) and interferon-γ (IFN-γ) of the bronchial hyper-responsiveness (BHR) cough patients. METHOD 84 subjects diagnosed as BHR were randomly divided into 42 Chinese Traditional m...

Patients with a polyherbal prescription are more likely to receive duplicate medications and thus suffer from adverse drug reactions. We conducted a population-based retrospective study to examine the items of Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) per prescription in the ambulatory care of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) in Taiwan. We retrieved complete TCM ambulatory visit datasets for 2010 from th...

CONTEXT Self-prescription is common among practicing physicians, but little is known about the practice among resident physicians. OBJECTIVE To determine prescription drug use and self-prescription among US resident physicians. DESIGN AND SETTING Anonymous mail survey of all resident physicians in 4 US categorical internal medicine training programs in February 1997. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES...

A survey was carried out among patent medicine dealers to evaluate their practices that militate against laws governing prescriptions-only medicines in Nigeria. Questionnaires were distributed to 46 patent medicine dealers and later collected from them on appointment. Analysis of the results showed that all the patent medicine dealers were aware of the law governing the sale of prescription dru...