Prescription audit at a tertiary care teaching hospital

Abstract

Background: Prescription audit analyzes prescriptions for their rationality. It is one of the prerequisites to ensure optimal health care. Aims and Objective: The present is undertaken to study the analysis of prescriptions in a tertiary care teaching hospital. Materials and Methods: An observational study was conducted from January 2012 to August 2015 at the Department of Pharmacology, Sri Devaraj Urs Medical College, Kolar. The prescriptions reaching the Pharmacy of RL Jalappa Hospital and Research Centre, Kolar, were analyzed for the total drugs prescribed, number of injectables, drugs prescribed by generic names, and categories of drugs. Results: A total of 9286 prescriptions were analyzed, of which 56.1% of them had incomplete patient details, 40.1% prescriptions contained 1–2 drugs, and 25.7% had five or more drugs. At least one antimicrobial was prescribed in 55.4% prescriptions, and 19.1% had at least one multivitamin preparation. A total of 31,923 drugs were prescribed, of which 42.3% of the drugs were injectables. The drugs which were prescribed using generic names constituted 11.3% of all the drugs. The major categories of drugs prescribed were antimicrobials (25%), drugs used in peptic ulcer (16.7%), and analgesics (12.6%). Conclusion: The audit of prescriptions revealed incompleteness, 25% had more than five drugs, antimicrobials were common, and the use of generic names was less.