Irrational use of medicine is the biggest problem in the health care system. All the stakeholders are equally responsible for irrational use of medicines. The current study was planned with this problem in mind finding out awareness regarding rational use of medicines among the physicians to find out drug prescribing patterns and to verify the quality of the prescriptions given to the patients. After Institutional Ethics Committee permission and after consenting the participants a pre-validated questionnaire was used for physicians and patients. Prescriptions of patients were photocopied. The study was conducted in the departments of dermatology, medicine or general OPD. The study duration was from June 2013 to April 2014 and a universal sampling was the technique used. The data was analyzed using descriptive statistics.
Result 70/105 physicians consented. The score for knowledge was 10.36 ± 1.96. 73 % were for generic prescriptions. The score per physician for attitude and practice on Likert scale was 67.47 ± 5.75. Fifty eight percent physicians mentioned they prescribe on diagnosis and first choice is preferred and 97% said FDCs are better for compliance. The average drugs prescribed per prescription was 3.545 ± 1.45 and legible were 32.37%. Non-pharmacological therapy mentioned in 11.87% and 54 % was complete in dose and duration. 40.64% of patients did not take the medications regularly, 95.57% said cost of medicines is the reason. 69% (120/174) purchased economical alternatives without informing the doctor. The awareness regarding RUM in physicians is low, cost of medicines deter patients from taking medicines regularly.
