Study of completeness of prescriptions in paediatrics emergency section of a tertiary hospital in Lagos, Nigeria

A prescription is the prescriber‘s written and signed formula instructing the pharmacist to supply the required drugs for a specific patient. It should be written legibly, accurately and completely in order to minimize errors in the dispensing and administration of medications. This study was to determine the level of occurrence of the essential elements in drug prescriptions in paediatric emergency section in LUTH. A total of 1158 prescriptions were studied and analysed for the essential elements. Also questionnaires were distributed to prescribers in the children emergency Unit of LUTH. Patient’s name was found to be the most occuring element (100%) while patient’s address was the least occuring element (11.5%). The other elements occurences were between 75 to 98% in the prescriptions studied. A similar trend was observed among the prescriber responses to rating of importance of basic elements in a prescription. The patient’s body weight was not included in the prescriptions studied. This is probably due to the fact that it is missing from the standard prescription form. Some of the prescriptions studied were deficient in some of the basic elements. It is being recommended that patient body weight should be included as an element in the standard prescription form for paediatric patients.