Indian Council of Medical Research: Every 10th patient has serious errors in their prescriptions, Errors in 44.87 percent prescriptions

Patients: Errors found in prescriptions led to increased treatment costs for about six percent of patients. Five percent of the patients had serious side effects of the drug.

Indian Council of Medical Research

WHO Guidline 

The World Health Organization (WHO) introduced international guidelines on rational prescribing in 1985.

Mistakes In Writing Prescriptions

A study conducted in 13 hospitals by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) showed that 44.87 percent of patients attending OPDs did not follow the guidelines while writing prescriptions.

Every tenth patient has serious errors in their prescriptions. Due to this, patients have to bear serious side effects.

The study was recently published in the Indian Journal of Medical Research. The study was jointly conducted by doctors of pharmacology departments of 13 hospitals including AIIMS Delhi, Safdarjung, AIIMS Bhopal, KEM Mumbai, PGI Chandigarh, Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences Patna.

A study was conducted by collecting prescriptions of 4,838 patients treated in OPDs of Community Medicine, General Medicine, Surgery, Paediatrics, Gynaecology, Dermatology and Ophthalmology Departments of those government and private sector hospitals between August 2019 and August 2020. In only 55.1 percent of these prescriptions, physicians followed the guidelines properly.

Errors were found in 44.87 percent of prescriptions. 38.65 percent of prescriptions did not mention the dosage, how often and how long to take the drug. Serious errors in prescriptions were found in 9.8 percent (475) prescriptions. As a result, treatment costs increased for about six percent of the patients included in the study. Five percent of patients had serious side effects from the drug.

Studies have shown that unnecessary drugs are being prescribed to patients to cure the disease as well as to avoid the side effects of the drug. Combined doses of Pantoprazole, Rabeprazole and Domperidone and oral enzymes are being unnecessarily over-prescribed. More errors were found in prescribing drugs for upper respiratory tract infections and hypertension.

All doctors are specialists

All the doctors who prescribed the drugs to the patients were MD or MS and had four to 18 years of experience. Many patients were prescribed a combined dose of rabeprazole and domperidone with antacids, which is not included in national and international guidelines.

Similarly, apart from Azithromycin, FDC Amoxicillin and Clavulanic Acid were also prescribed for the treatment of URTI (Upper Respiratory Tract Infection). Misuse of antibiotics increases the risk of them becoming ineffective.

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