Abstract
Introduction Rational medicine use is an appropriate prescribing, dispensing, and patient use of medicines for the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of diseases. It is affected by several factors. Irrational use of medicine is a widespread problem at all levels of care. This review is aimed at assessing the medicine use pattern in health facilities of Ethiopia using the medicine use pattern developed by WHO/INRUD. Methods Relevant literature was searched from Google Scholar, PubMed, Hinari, Web of Science, and Scopus using inclusion and exclusion criteria. A systematic review was used to summarize the medicine use pattern in health facilities of Ethiopia, and that WHO core drug use indicators were employed. Result From 188 searched studies, 30 literatures were reviewed. The average number of drugs per encounter was 2.11. The percentage of encounters with antibiotics and injection was 57.16% and 22.39%, respectively. The percentage of drugs prescribed by generic name and from an essential drug list was 91.56% and 90.19%, respectively. On average, patients spent 5.14 minutes for consultation and 106.52 seconds for dispensing. From prescribed drugs, 67.79% were dispensed, while only 32.25% were labeled adequately. The availability of key essential medicines was 64.87%. The index of rational drug use value was 7.26. Moreover, the index of rational drug prescribing, index of rational patient-care drug use, and index of rational facility-specific drug use were 3.74, 2.51, and 1.01, respectively. Conclusion Ethiopian health facilities were faced with antibiotic overprescribing, short consultation, and dispensing times, poor labeling of medicines, poor availability of key drugs, and nonadherence to the essential drug list. Routine, multidisciplinary awareness creation, and regulation should be implemented to promote rational medicine use at a national level.
Highlights
Rational medicine use is an appropriate prescribing, dispensing, and patient use of medicines for the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of diseases
This review was aimed at assessing the medicine use pattern in health facilities in a reproducible manner using the medicine use pattern developed by the World Health Organization (WHO)/international network for rational use of drugs (INRUD)
A detailed description of the characteristics of individual studies is displayed in Table 1 (Table 1)
Summary
Rational medicine use is an appropriate prescribing, dispensing, and patient use of medicines for the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of diseases. Ethiopian health facilities were faced with antibiotic overprescribing, short consultation, and dispensing times, poor labeling of medicines, poor availability of key drugs, and nonadherence to the essential drug list. The appropriate use of medicine is essential for optimizing the health of individual patients and the population of any nation [3]. Rational drug use (RDU) includes appropriate prescribing, dispensing, and patient use of medicines for the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of diseases [4, 5]. To promote RDU, the patient should receive medicines appropriate to their health care conditions, at optimum doses and sufficient time, as well as at the cost that the individual and the community [4]
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