Publication:

Audit of prescription notes from a tertiary health centre, AIMS, BG Nagar, India: a cross-sectional study

Background Prescription is a written order from physician to pharmacist which contains name of the drug, its dose and its method of dispensing and advice over consuming it. The frequencies of drug prescription errors are high. Prescription error contributes significantly towards adverse drug events. The present study was undertaken to understand the current prescription writing practices and to detect the common errors in them at a tertiary health care centre situated in BG Nagar, Mandya, Karnataka, India.

Methods A cross sectional study was conducted in Adichunchanagiri Institute of medical Sciences, BG nagar, Mandya, India during April- May 2015. 187 prescriptions were analyzed. Important information regarding the patient, doctor, drug and the general description of the prescription were obtained.

Results All the prescriptions were on the hospital pad. A significant number of the prescriptions were written in illegible (11%) or barely legible (20%) handwriting. The name, age and sex of the patient were not mentioned in majority of the prescriptions. All the prescriptions (100%) failed to demonstrate the presence of address, height and weight of the patient. Brand name of the drugs was mentioned in all the prescriptions with only 8% of them having the generic name. The quantity, dose and medicinal form were found missing in 1.7%, 29.5%, and 2.2% of the prescriptions.

Conclusions The findings of our study show that there is a need for improvement in the quality of prescriptions written by the doctors. The adoption of a computer aided prescribing system would go a long way in achieving this objective.