Knowledge, attitude, and practice of rational use of medicines among junior residents in a tertiary care hospital - a cross-sectional study

Abstract

Background: The need for rational use of medicines aims at prescribing medications to patients with doses for a period of time that is adequate and appropriately meets their clinical and individual requirements without financially burdening both the patient and community. Aims and Objectives: The aims and objectives of the study are to assess knowledge, attitude, and practice of rational use of medicines. Materials and Methods: After obtaining ethical committee clearance, this cross-sectional, questionnaire-based study was conducted among junior residents of KR hospital, a tertiary care hospital attached to MMC&RI, Mysore. A self-developed, pre-validated, semi-structured questionnaire was used. It was designed in such a manner to obtain information about the knowledge, attitude, and practice of rational use of medicine. Results: The majority of the respondents were aware about parts of prescription (87%), though 61% of respondents were aware of p-drug, only 22% of them were aware of Safety, Tolerability, Efficacy, Price criteria for selection of p-drug, many were not aware about the advantages of using p-drug (71%). 10% never consider the cost of drugs before prescribing, only <1% respondents handwriting was not legible in their prescription, 40% of them never use abbreviations. Conclusion: Teaching of rational use of medicines is not given much importance in most of the medical colleges. Continued emphasis on the inclusion of essential medicine concept in undergraduate and post-graduate medical curriculum will help in using a drug rationally.