Recently, the adverse drug reactions in Vietnam have increased significantly, mostly due to the unreasonable drug prescription. To address this problem, we studied the outpatient drug prescription situation at eight local hospitals in Can Tho city, the center of Mekong Delta. The main objective of this study was to evaluate the drug prescription parameters, their rationality and safety in outpatient treatments. Cross sectional descriptive study was conducted, with a population of 2,843 outpatient prescriptions, at eight hospitals located in the rural areas of Can Tho city, over six months, from August, 2016. Two groups of parameters were evaluated: (1) Eleven prescription indicators: the prescribed drugs number, the average prescription cost, the proportion of generic drugs, antibiotics, corticosteroids, vitamins, essential drugs, and their cost ratio; (2) Four rationality concerns: drug interactions, outpatient prescription policy, prescription accuracy, and the overall safety indicator. The results showed that the average number of drugs in each prescription was 4.6, with 91.1% generic drugs, 37% antibiotics, 82.3% essential drugs, 16.1% corticosteroids, 25.9% vitamin. The average prescription cost was USD 2.5. The highest cost was the essential drugs (79.7%), whereas the lowest one was corticosteroids (1.5%). For the rationality, 13.4% of prescriptions had drug interactions, with enalapril-metformin as the most occurrence (10.1%). 95% of the prescriptions were accurate. Although most parameters were acceptable, some of them still in need of enhancement. Our study might suggest further ideas for the development of Mekong Delta healthcare systems.
Keywords
Outpatient drug prescription; Can Tho; Mekong Delta