Assistant Professor, Department of Pharmacology, SMS Medical College, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India

Senior Demonstrator,Department of Pharmacology, SMS Medical College, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India

Senior Demonstrator, Department of Pharmacology, SMS Medical College, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India

Professor, Department of Pharmacology, NIMS Medical College, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India.
Prescription Errors ,Poly-pharmacy ,Supplements ,

Prescriptions are written in order to treat and protect the health of sufferers. But many times trivial or major mistakes in these prescriptions may create confusion and even adversely affect the health and resources of patients. The study was designed to analyze the prescriptions from psychiatry OPD in order to determine the pattern and frequency of common prescription errors. Another aim was to find the pattern of distribution of common psychiatric illnesses in local population. Total 918 prescriptions written between August 2014 and March 2015 were randomly selected from the OPD of psychiatry department in a tertiary care hospital in Rajasthan. They were studied to find errors in terms of omission of information regarding patients and drugs, practice of poly-pharmacy, supplements, fixed dose combinations and any other related error. It was observed that 99% of prescriptions were perfectly written and error rate was just around 1% which is in the acceptable range as per WHO (1-3%). Furthermore, most of the errors (64.3%) were trivial in nature which could be due to excessive work load that can be corrected easily. Overuse of abbreviations, unnecessary supplements (in form of vitamins and minerals) and practice of poly pharmacy are the fields which still require some more attention and sensitization. Practitioners are usually following the norms of ideal prescription in Rajasthan, but they are required to curtail poly-pharmacy, excessive use of abbreviations and supplements in the prescription orders.

5 , 3 , 2015