Evaluating the Pediatric Prescribing Pattern in a Health Facility in Nigeria

Evaluating The Pediatric Prescribing Pattern in a Health Facility in Nigeria

OBJECTIVES:

To access and analyze the prescribing patterns of medical practitioners in the outpatient pediatric clinic of Bingham University Teaching Hospital, Nigeria.

METHODS:

A cross-sectional study using patients' medical records who attended the outpatient pediatric clinic from January 1 to April 30, 2022. The WHO prescribing indicators and guidelines for the investigation of drug use in health facilities were used.

RESULTS:

554 prescriptions met the inclusion criteria and were used. A total of 1890 drugs were prescribed, with an average number of drugs per prescription of 3.4. 303(54.7%) were written for males, 219 for females (39.5%), and 32 prescriptions (6.0%) did not have the sex of the patient written on them. A total of four hundred and fifty-one patients (81.4%) had at least one antibiotic prescribed, and the percentage of encounters with injection was 17.5% (97 patients). Prescribing by generic name was done for 975 (51.6%) drugs, and of the 1890 drugs prescribed, 1693 (89.6%) drugs were from the WHO Pediatric Essential Medication List. 80% of the prescriptions contained an antimalaria, and analgesics/antipyretics were the most frequently prescribed medicine(87.9%).

CONCLUSIONS:

Our finding suggests that medical prescribers have not fully adopted the WHO prescribing guidelines despite some studies on drug prescription patterns. There is a continuing crisis of irrational prescribing among medical practitioners in Nigeria. Irrational prescribing of antibiotics, polypharmacy, and prescribing by brand name instead of the generic name are real issues facing health facilities.