An Audit of Selected Prescriptions Written at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital

A prescription is a legal document that should be carefully prepared. One of the duties of care which a doctor owes a patient is to write a drug prescription clearly, and failure to do so is negligence.

A quantitative study in design, quasi-experimental in method, prospective and correlational cross-sectional with a purposeful convenience sampling strategy was used to audit 611 prescriptions which were presented over a period of three months. A primary data collection method was used to audit prescriptions presented at the fee-paying pharmacy of the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, by comparing it with the World Health Organisation standard for good prescription. The data were analysed using the statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) version 21.0.

A total of 611 prescriptions were audited. All the audited prescriptions were written by doctors. The date of prescription was documented in 97%. 96.6% were legible, 96.7% had the patient’s name while 70% indicated the age of the patients. The strength of drug was written in only 66.1%. The prescriber’s name was written in 54%. Information for package label was documented in 4.3%, less than 20% had the initials or signature of the prescriber. In all, only 0.8% complied excellently, 65.8% were good, 29.8% were average while 3.6% rated poorly. The overall mean score of all the prescription was good (7-9).

There is a need to develop a standard prescription policy at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital that will help in reducing medication errors.