Prescribing habits for children with acute gastroenteritis: a comparison over 5 years

Prescriptions for children with acute gastroenteritis, requiring hospital admission were compared for the first 3 months of 1980 and 1985. Thirty-three children were identified in 1980 compared with 30 in 1985. Of these, 20 were prescribed a total of 46 drugs by their general practitioners in 1980 compared with 12 and 15 respectively in 1985. Although general practitioners still prescribed more medicines than did hospital doctors the improvement over 5 years was statistically significant (P less than 0.05).