Review of Prescription in a Retail Pharmacy in Suva, Fiji

In Fiji, irrational use of drug is may be due to the prescribing patterns, the dispensing and counselling patterns and also caused by the ignorance of patients or their lack of compliance and adherence to their medication or just the mere fact of their (patients) lack of understanding of the medication in use. However, this research focused only on the prescribing part of the drug use process and how these patterns can influence the rational use of drugs.
The study was a retrospective cross- sectional study which looked at 460 prescriptions in a retail pharmacy in Suva City, Central, Fiji; specifically selected by the researcher. The prescriptions that were reviewed or studied were from the past 2 years, starting from January 2016 to November of 2017. There was no experiment carried out but rather about obtaining reasons behind the outcomes of the findings. The prescriptions were kept in the pharmacy for about 2 years, therefore prescriptions from the past 2 years was reviewed.
From the 460 prescriptions, 360 were new prescriptions while 70 were for repeat of medications.
A total of 1375 drugs were prescribed and the average age of patients was 41.94 ± 19.57 years. The average number of medicines prescribed per prescription was 2.99 ± I .92 medicines. 19% of patients were on polypharmacy. There was a 93% of prescription prescribed with generic names of products. Additionally, the percentage of prescription with an antibiotic is 46.3%; and percentage of prescription with an injection and drugs prescribed from the Essential Medicines List is 15% and 78% respectively. Generally, it seems that there is need for improvement of the prescribing of medicines in the private sector. Future similar studies may consider linking the patient diagnosis and the prescribed medications.
Keywords: Prescribing Indicators, polypharmacy, retail pharmacy, prescribing, prescription reviewing