Drug prescription pattern among patients on national health insurance at a tertiary care hospital in north east Nigeria

Abstract

The quality of drug prescriptions is one of many determining factors of patient treatment outcomes. Irrational drug use is a significant contributor to adverse reactions and its associated morbidity and mortality among patients. In addition, it also increase the cost of medical care, reduce affordability of drugs and impose unnecessary financial cost for medical services. Evaluation of prescribing practices using appropriate tools is one of the many methods of assessing the quality and rational of drug use in healthcare facilities. The major objective of this study is to determine level of polypharmacy and drug prescribing pattern using WHO core indicators. This was a cross sectional retrospective study of prescriptions obtained from pharmacy dispensing records. A total of 5079 prescriptions over a two year period were retrieved using simple random sampling method and relevant data extracted for analysis. The result showed that antibiotics, analgesics and haematinics were the most prescribed class of drugs. The number of drugs per encounter and percentage of prescriptions with antibiotics was higher than WHO core indicators. Prescription of drugs from essential drug list and in generic names was low. This result indicated that wide gap remain between recommended standard of rational drug use and drug prescription practices that needs to be bridged if patients are to derive optimal benefits therapy. Prescribing practices were not in alignment with WHO core indicators of rational drug use. There is need to strengthen oversight of prescription practices and education of prescribers to improve drug prescription habits.