www.ijbcp.com International Journal of Basic & Clinical Pharmacology | December 2019 | Vol 8 | Issue 12 Page 2685 IJBCP International Journal of Basic & Clinical Pharmacology Print ISSN: 2319-2003 | Online ISSN: 2279-0780 Original Research Article Influence of interventions on prescription writing practices in a tertiary care teaching hospital Priti P. Dhande 1 *, S. D. Kawade 2 INTRODUCTION Prescription writing is a skill which invites accuracy in the process to ensure the appropriateness of the message to be passed to the pharmacist, nurse or patient for whom it is meant. Pharmacists and patients are the addressee of the prescription when it is given in out-patient department while drug prescriptions on medication charts are instructions for the nurses to respond accordingly. The completeness and legibility of the prescription is very crucial for its correct interpretation and administration (or consumption) of medication without any errors. Medication errors are very common in day-to-day clinical practice and are avoidable with proper targeted interventions which can improve healthcare. To achieve this, we have to focus on the cause and frequency of medication errors in clinical settings and what allows them to slip in different scenarios of patient management. Similar initiative was undertaken in the western world (U.K, U.S.A) with success. 1 ABSTRACT Background: Prescription practices should be good so that they are correctly interpreted and medications are used or administered accordingly. Studies are found usually focusing on WHO prescribing indicators in various healthcare set-ups. This prescription audit study was conducted to analyse the prescription practices in a tertiary care hospital and see the influence of various interventions on these practices. Methods: It was a quality initiative undertaken to retrospectively assess and evaluate the change in the prescription writing practices in the in-patient department of a tertiary care teaching hospital from March 2017 to April 2018. Number of interventions were conducted to meet the compliance of prescription parameters during the study period and prescription parameters was analysed again thereafter for one-year to see the change. Results: An overall increase in compliance of prescription parameters was found from 67.3% in March 2017 to 94.8% in June 2017. Thereafter this was consistently maintained upto 91% during the study period. Most of the prescription parameters were seen to be improved like allergy history taking from 52.2-95.6%; mention of prescriber’s name, sign, registration number from 53.5-86%; consideration to food-drug interaction from 28.7-99.5%. Conclusions: Prescription writing practices were quite poor initially which improved after various interventions were carried out in the study area. Keywords: Prescription, Audit, Interventions, Improvement DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18203/2319-2003.ijbcp20195278 1 Department of Pharmacology, Bharati Vidyapeeth Deemed to be University Medical College, Pune, Dhankawadi, Maharashtra, India 2 Department of Quality Bharati Hospital and Research Centre, India, Dhankawadi, Pune, Maharashtra, India Received: 30 September 2019 Revised: 12 November 2019 Accepted: 14 November 2019 *Correspondence to: Dr. Priti Dhande, Email: pritidhande76@ gmail.com Copyright: © the author(s), publisher and licensee Medip Academy. This is an open- access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non- Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non- commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.