Evaluation of Prescribing Indicators if General Practitioners in a Military Hospital in Tehran

Rational use of drugs is one of the major issues in healthcare systems. Analysis of prescriptions would be helpful in recognition of physician's behavior and population beliefs. Rational prescribing is associated with improved safety in drug use, better quality of life for patients and cost-effective care. The aim of this study was to explore drug prescription habits by using WHO standard indicators.
The study is descriptive, cross-sectional and retrospective, sample of 1035 prescriptions of general practitioners selected randomly from Outpatient clinic in a military hospital at Tehran In both summer and winter seasons. World Health Organization Indicators for Prescribing such as Average of items per prescription, Rate of Antibiotics, Injectable Drugs and corticosteroid was analyzed.
Average of items per prescription was 3.93 and the proportion of prescriptions for injectable drugs was 58.9%, for antibiotics 49.71% and for Corticosteroid 18.35%. Medication Indicators were significantly higher in winter than in the summer.
In this Study, prescribing indicators were far from international recommended criteria, however, it is necessary to improve this conditions because Inappropriate use of drugs leads to low quality of medical and public health care's and therefore wasting human and financial resources and can be harmful for patient and community health and economy.