Assessment of Patterns of Drug use by using World Health Organization's Prescribing, Patient Care and Health facility indicators in Selected Health Facilities in Southwest Ethiopia

The objective of the study was to assessing patterns of drug use by using World Health Organization prescribing, patient care and health facility indicators in Southwest Ethiopia. A cross sectional study was carried out in four randomly selected health facilities. Retrospectively the prescription papers analyzed according to WHO guideline. Prospectively 35 patients from each of the four health facilities were interviewed at the outpatient pharmacy while drugs were dispensed to assess the patient care indicators. The average number of drugs per prescription ranging from 1.98 to 2.24. The mean consultation time spent between the prescriber and patient were range from 5.47 to 6.50. The mean pharmacy dispensing time was 1.23 minutes to 1.25minutes. The average number of drugs prescribed was in the range of 1.80 to 2.88. Two of the health facilities had a copy of Ethiopian essential drug list (EDL), 2(50%) had a copy of standard treatment guideline for health centers and only 1 (25%) of the health facility had a copy of drug formulary. The pattern of prescription in terms of generic name and polypharmacy was near to optimal. The pattern of antibiotics and injection prescribing appears appropriate when compared with the world health organization guideline. However, there is a need to improve patients’ knowledge on dispensed drugs.