Assessment of Drug Prescription Pattern in Two District Hospitals, Northwest Ethiopia

Background: According to World Health Organization more than half of all medicines are prescribed and dispensed improperly, hence half of patients take them inappropriately. To reduce morbidity and mortality and their adverse outcomes, appropriate drug utilization has an enormous impact. Methodology: This study is aimed to assess prescription patterns of drugs in Finote Selam and Motta District Hospital in outpatient pharmacy unit. The study was cross-sectional retrospective by selecting the outpatient pharmacy units of Finote Selam and Motta district hospitals. A total of 362 prescription papers were incorporated from March 01/2015 to February 29/2016. A structured standardized proforma, adopted from the world health organizations, was used to fill data by observing the prescriptions papers of patients. The data was entered into EPI INFO version 7.0, and then analyzed using World Health Organization drug use indicators. Results: A total of 362 prescriptions were reviewed retrospectively from a total of those prescribed for 1-year period. The average number of drugs prescribed per encounter was 2.1 with a range between 1 and 5. The percentage of encounters in which an antibiotic or injection was ordered was 58.8% and 3.6%, respectively while the percentage of those drugs prescribed by generic name and from an essential drug list was 98.4% (n=742) and 81% (n=611), respectively. Amoxicillin (9.2%), ciprofloxacin (6.2%), and doxycycline (4.8%) were among the common antibiotics prescribed. Conclusion: Our study showed that the prescription pattern for most antibiotics deviates from the one advised by the world health organization. There is also overuse of some antibiotics which needs urgent intervention. The study also revealed the occurrence of an increasing practice of prescribing drugs using generic names. The very interesting point that our study revealed is problems like poly pharmacy and prescribing from the essential drug list were not concerns in the studied hospitals. Baseline data gathered by this study can be used by researchers and policymakers to improve prescribing practice at these two Hospitals. Lastly, drug prescribing practices in these two hospitals are not far from the world health organization requirements.