Patterns of prescription in Jimma Hospital

Abstract

Abstract:

A total of 2170 prescriptions were recorded over a period of one year using structured questionnaire to systematically study drug-prescription patterns in Jimma Hospital. The prescription patterns demonstrated 94.8% for essential drugs and 75.2% for generic prescribing. The average number of drugs per prescription was 1.59 and the cost per prescription indicated 3.28 Birr. The proportion of prescriptions with antimicrobial combination accounted for 2.72%. The most frequently prescribed agents were antimicrobials 33.1%. The proportion of prescriptions with injection was 20.2%. Of the major diseases, Respiratory Tract Infections accounted for 13.6% of the prescriptions. The findings indicated that there were good signs of rational drug prescribing as noted by low average number of drugs per prescription and high proportion of generic prescribing that matched with prevalent disease patterns, although, there seemed to be problems with antimicrobial combinations and high frequency of injections. [Ethiop. J. Health Dev. 1997;11(3):263-267]