Abstract

EVALUATION OF RATIONAL PRESCRIBING AND PRESCRIPTION ERRORS IN MIZAN-TEPI UNIVERSITY TEACHING HOSPITAL: A CROSSSECTIONAL RETROSPECTIVE STUDY

Background: The rational prescribing of medicines allows patients to get medicines based on their clinical indication, at the lowest possible cost in appropriate doses that fulfills individual requirements. The current study aim is to investigate prescribing pattern and prescription errors in Mizan–Tepi university teaching hospital, which in found in southwest Ethiopia. methods: A retrospective cross-sectional study was conducted from January 1, 2021 to January 30, 2021. Six hundred prescriptions papers ordered from January 01, 2020 to December 30, 2020 were randomly selected and evaluated against WHO rational prescribing indicators and standard prescription paper. The data was entered into SPSS version 23 and descriptive statistics were computed. The total, mean, standard deviation, and percentage were calculated. Results: From 600 prescriptions evaluated, there was 1.98+0.89(mean + SD) number of drugs per prescription. Among these 343(57.33%) had one or more antibiotics and 81(13.5%) had injections prescribed. Regarding prescription errors, 2355 omission errors (3.9 errors/prescription) and 535 commission errors were found on the evaluated prescriptions. Among Omission errors 1086 errors were omission of patient information and 968 were omission of prescriber information and 301 were omission of drug information. The identified commission errors were wrong spelling of drug (35.5%), illegible handwriting (45.5%) and use of unauthorized abbreviations (8.2%). Conclusion: Even though, prescribing poly-pharmacy and injections were good, there were antibiotics overuse and numerous errors in writing the prescriptions. Diagnosis and patient addresses are commonly missing. Therefore, the Mizan-Tepi University Teaching hospital management and pharmacy department should take appropriate actions

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