Insight Into Quality of Prescription Writing - An Instituitional Study

Prescription writing is an important task performed by a doctor during patient management. Prescription refers to written instructions given to a patient regarding medications. Lack of attention during prescription writing can lead to prescription errors which in turn can adversely affect patients' well-being. Thus, prescriptions are an important target area for improvement.

The purpose of the present study was to analyze the quality of prescriptions dispensed by the students of The Oxford Dental College and Hospital, Bangalore and to compare the prescription writing patterns amongst undergraduates, interns and postgraduates of this institution.

A cross-sectional study was conducted on 500 randomly selected prescriptions dispensed by the students of The Oxford Dental College and Hospital, Bangalore, India. All the prescriptions were analyzed for the presence of (a) Patient's information: Out-Patient file number, name, age, gender, address and contact number (b) Doctors information: Full name, department name, qualification, contact details, date of prescription, superscription, and signature (c) Drug information: Name, strength, dosage form, dosage instructions, duration and total quantity. Each prescription was further categorized into groups A, B, C or D, depending on the scores obtained. Prescription quality was then compared between the undergraduates, interns and postgraduates.

Analysis of prescriptions performed using Chi-square test showed that groups A, B, C and D had 12 (2%), 155 (31%), 333 (67%) and 0 (0%) students respectively. Association between the groups and qualifications showed statistically significant results (p<0.05). Undergraduate prescriptions were better written in comparison to interns and postgraduates.

Findings of the current study demonstrate the need for further improvement in the quality of prescription writing by students of The Oxford Dental College and Hospital, Bangalore, India.