Pharmacotherapy assessment by WHO core prescribing pattern in a teaching hospital in the capital city, Islamabad, Pakistan

In developing countries, access to essential medicines is a common issue. Generic drug prescribing and drug prescribed from essential drug lists (EDL) minimizes the error in adopting pharma-cotherapy approaches and improves the safe and effective use of drugs. This study aimed to assess the con-sultants’ prescribing patterns in a teaching hospital. A prospective descriptive study was carried out from January to March 2020. The systematic random sampling technique was used for collecting prescriptions from consultants in outpatient pharmacy departments (OPD) of the hospital. The collected data was assessed using the World health organization (WHO) core prescribing indicators and their standard guide-lines. A total of 639 prescriptions were collected prospectively in which 3136 drugs were prescribed (Mean; 4.9) in prescriptions. The majority of the drugs, 77.7% (n = 2438) were prescribed from EDL while 6.1% (n = 194) of drugs by generic names. Antibiotics were prescribed in 9.6% (n = 303), while in-jections in 9.8% (n = 308) prescriptions. Among consultants; the average number of drugs per prescription were prescribed by Nephrologists (6.81), Rheumatologists (6.61), Pulmonologists (6.53), Endocrinolo-gists (5.51), and Urologists (2.95) in each prescription. Whereas most of the Pulmonologist prescribed (31.4%) of the drugs by their generic name and from EDL (25.5%). It was concluded that pharmacothera-py pattern among consultants regarding WHO core prescribing patterns shows deviation from the recommended WHO guidelines and drug prescribing patterns should be assessed for prescribing indicators to promote safe and effective drug therapy.