Research Article Pattern and Appropriateness of Medicines Prescribed to Outpatients at a University Hospital in Northwestern Ethiopia Fitsum Sebsibe Teni, 1 Sewunet Admasu Belachew, 2 Begashaw Melaku Gebresillassie, 2 Eshetie Melese Birru, 3 Befikadu Legesse Wubishet, 4 Bethelhem Hailu Tekleyes, 5 Bilal Tessema Yimer, 5 and Yonas Getaye Tefera 2 1 Department of Pharmaceutics and Social Pharmacy, School of Pharmacy, College of Health Sciences, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia 2 Department of Clinical Pharmacy, School of Pharmacy, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Gondar, Gondar, Ethiopia 3 Department of Pharmacology, School of Pharmacy, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Gondar, Gondar, Ethiopia 4 Research Center for Generational Health and Ageing, Faculty of Health and Medicine, University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW, Australia 5 Department of Pharmaceutics, School of Pharmacy, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Gondar, Gondar, Ethiopia Correspondence should be addressed to Fitsum Sebsibe Teni; itse4@gmail.com Received 18 July 2017; Accepted 26 November 2017; Published 18 December 2017 Academic Editor: Kurt G. Naber Copyright © 2017 Fitsum Sebsibe Teni et al. his is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. he study assessed the pattern and appropriateness of medicines prescribed to outpatients at Gondar University Referral Hospital in northwestern Ethiopia. An institution-based cross-sectional study was employed, through interviews and prescription reviews, among 346 patients at the outpatient pharmacy, from 2nd to 20th of May 2016. Data on sociodemographic proile of patients and medicines prescribed to them were collected. A mean of 1.72 medicines per encounter was prescribed, over a third of the total being anti-infectives. Patients were able to get about 85% of these medicines. An unskilled government employee would be required to work more than one and a half day to be able to aford the average priced medicine. Among prescriptions with two or more medicines, more than a third had at least one potential drug-drug interaction (PDDI), the commonest pair containing amoxicillin and doxycycline. Being male, being older (50–59 years), and increased number of medicines were associated with higher likelihood of PDDIs. In conclusion, the number of medicines prescribed per encounter was up to accepted standard. However, their availability fell short, together with considerable cost. Regarding appropriateness, a signiicant proportion of potential drug-drug interactions is identiied and associated with patient’s sex, age, and number of medicines prescribed. 1. Introduction Globally, medicine use is expected to reach 4.5 trillion doses in 2020 with the cost predicted being 1.4 trillion dollars. In the same year, over half of the global population will use more than one dose of medicine per person per day. Two-thirds of the medicines in the market will be used in emerging markets, India, China, Brazil, and Indonesia being the leading ones. An improvement in access to medicines globally is also expected, with diferences still existing among countries [1]. United Nations Millennium Development Goals related indings reported the availability of medicines in developing countries to be low, with an average of 34.9% in the public sec- tor of 27 developing countries. Similarly, availability in private sectors was found to be 36.8% [2]. Another study in Ghana, Kenya, and Uganda shows varying levels of availability among the countries and diferent levels of health institutions in the countries [3]. As to appropriateness, a World Health Organization (WHO) document on appropriate/rational prescribing out- lines a six-step approach to the process. hese include dein- ing the problem with the patient, setting objectives regarding its treatment, assessing whether p-drugs/treatments could Hindawi BioMed Research International Volume 2017, Article ID 3729401, 7 pages https://doi.org/10.1155/2017/3729401