Tropical Medicine and Infectious Disease (Jan 2023)

Rationality of Prescriptions by Rational Use of Medicine Consensus Approach in Common Respiratory and Gastrointestinal Infections: An Outpatient Department Based Cross-Sectional Study from India

  • Debjit Chakraborty,
  • Falguni Debnath,
  • Suman Kanungo,
  • Sandip Mukhopadhyay,
  • Nabanita Chakraborty,
  • Rivu Basu,
  • Palash Das,
  • Kalpana Datta,
  • Suman Ganguly,
  • Prithwijit Banerjee,
  • Nilima Kshirsagar,
  • Shanta Dutta

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/tropicalmed8020088
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 8, no. 2
p. 88

Abstract

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Background: Drug utilisation studies are relevant for the analysis of prescription rationality and are pertinent in today’s context of the increasing burden of antimicrobial resistance. Prescriptions for patients with diarrhoea or Acute Respiratory Infection (ARI) have been analysed in this study to understand the prescription pattern among various categories of prescribers in two tertiary care centers. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted from August 2019 to December 2020 in the medicine and pediatrics outpatient departments of two government teaching hospitals in West Bengal, India. A total of 630 prescriptions were evaluated against WHO standards. Prescriptions were assessed by a ‘Rational Use of Medicine Consensus committee’ approach. Results: The Fixed Dose Combination (FDC) was used in half of the patients (51%). Both the generic prescription (23.3%) and adherence to hospital formulary rates (36.5%) were low. The antibiotics prescription rate was high (57%), and it was higher for diarrhoea than ARI. Deviations from the standard treatment guidelines were found in 98.9% of prescriptions. Deviations were commonly found with prescriptions written by the junior doctors (99.6%). Conclusion: Irrational prescribing patterns prevail in tertiary care centers and indicate the necessity of awareness generation and capacity building among prescribers regarding AMR and its unseen consequences.

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