BACKGROUND Efforts to improve the quality of care for patients with cardiovascular disease frequently target the decrease of physician-level performance variability. We assessed how variability in providing β-blockers to ambulatory postmyocardial infarction (MI) patients was influenced by physician and patient level characteristics. METHODS AND RESULTS β-Blocker prescription and patient chara...

BACKGROUND The question whether patients actually start drug taking after having received a first antidepressant prescription is often overlooked. AIM To determine the incidence of patients who do not fill or fill only a single antidepressant prescription at the pharmacy, and to identify associated patient characteristics. DESIGN OF STUDY Retrospective study linking a general practice to a ...

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 Age-related alterations in metabolism and excretion of medications increase the risk of adverse drug events in the elderly. Inappropriate polypharmacy and prescription practice entails increased burdens of impaired quality of life and drug related morbidity and mortality. The main objective of this trial is to evaluate effects of a tailored educational intervention towards general pr...

BACKGROUND All hospitalized patients should be assessed for venous thromboembolism (VTE) risk factors and prescribed appropriate prophylaxis. To improve best-practice VTE prophylaxis prescription for all hospitalized patients, we implemented a mandatory computerized clinical decision support (CCDS) tool. The tool requires completion of checklists to evaluate VTE risk factors and contraindicatio...

Information Prescription (IPs) is provision of specific evidence based health information to a specific individual/patient to help him/her understand, manage and control the ill health. Most of the time it is defined as prescription of right information to right person at right time (Kemper-Mettler, 2002a). Maybe this definition is the simplest way for describing a powerful complex process. To ...