ASSESSMENT OF PRESCRIBING INDICATORS IN TWOCOMMUNITY PHARMACIES IN FESTAC, LAGOS NIGERIA

OBJECTIVE:To assess prescribing indicators in health care facilitates in Festac, Lagos State, Nigeria. METHODS: The study employed a retrospective design and as such 180 prescriptionswere collected initially from the community pharmacies prescription indicator forms for patients. The information included; patients age, number of drugs prescribed, number of antibiotics prescribed, number of injections prescribed and the number drugs prescribed by generic name, and number of drugs classified on the essential drug list (EDL). The retrieved data were sorted and crosschecked for completeness and entered into Microsoft Excel for sorting. the data was later exported into the computer software Statistical Package for the social sciences (SPSS) version 26 for descriptive analysis. RESULT:Among the 180 data collected, the ages ranged from 3 months to 62 yearsandpatients from ages 15years (5.6%) were the highest in number. Based on the number of drugs prescribed per patients; patients that had 3 drugs 74(41.1%) in their prescription were the highest and the least being those that had 6 drugs in their prescription list 2(1.1%).the number of antibiotics dispensed per patients showed that patients prescribed 1 antibiotic was higher 80(44.4%) than those prescribed two types of antibiotics 14(7.8%). However, patients’ prescription drugs that are present in the essential drug list showed that a very high number of patients prescription are on the EDL. CONCLUSION:Some of the core drug use indicators were not met with the WHO standards such as average number of drugs prescribed, percentage medicines prescribed by generic names, percentage drugs prescribed by generic name, percentage of encounters with an antibiotic prescribed and percentage medicine prescribed from essential drugs list or formulary only percentage encounters with an injection prescribed.