DEVIATION IN WHO CORE PRESCRIBING INDICATORS AMONG SURGICAL PATIENTS IN SECONDARY CARE HOSPITAL: THE NEED FOR RATIONAL PRESCRIBING

Irrational use of medicines is a major problem worldwide. In surgical patients, a greater number of drugs are prescribed So, evaluating prescribing patterns of various medications in surgical inpatients would enable identifying the presence of irrational use, thereby paving a way to rational prescribing. A prospective observational study was conducted in a secondary care hospital for six months. The general surgery, gynecology and orthopedic wards were included in the study. Descriptive statistics were used to assess drug utilization patterns and measure drug use indicators. A total of 97 patients admitted to the orthopedic, general surgery, and gynecology wards were enrolled in the study. The most commonly prescribed medications were Operation theatre (OT) medications, analgesics, Gastrointestinal tract(GIT) related medicines, antimicrobial agents (AMA), and their percentage use was 29.47%, 16.44%, 16.24%, 12.03%, respectively. Based on WHO core prescribing indicators, the average number of drugs per encounter was 15.4, the drugs prescribed from WHO-EML (World Health Organization- Essential Medicines List) were 29.87%, and the total number of prescriptions with injection was 95.8%. From this study, it was observed that prescription patterns highly deviated from the WHO core prescribing indicators, increasing the overall burden to the patient. Drug Utilization Evaluation (DUE) studies on large populations done in a secondary care setting can help to improve prescribing patterns and enhance the quality of care.