Quality of Prescriptions in a Tertiary Care Hospital in South-West Nigeria.

The quality of prescribing influences to a large extent the health outcomes of patients as errors made could result in adverse drug reactions. The aim of this study was to assess the quality of prescription written by medical doctors in a tertiary healthcare facility in rural south-west Nigeria. A cross-sectional retrospective analysis of randomly selected prescriptions from all adult outpatient clinics of the hospital between October 1, 2010 and March 31, 2011 was carried out. The prescriptions were checked for the completeness of the patients’ bio-data (name, age, sex, and hospital number), accuracy of drug dosage and formulation, prescribing by generic name, use of abbreviation, legibility of prescriber’s writing, the name and signature of the prescriber. Six hundred and two (602) prescriptions were collected and used for analysis. A total of 2167 medications were prescribed with a mean of 3.6 ± 1.6 per encounter. All the prescriptions had patient’s name and hospital numbers written. The age, hospital number and address of the patients was recorded in 421 (69.9%), 480 (79.7%) and 323 (53.7%) respectively. The doctor’s name, signature and date of encounter was indicated 587 (97.5%), 546 (90.7%) and 556 (92.7%) respectively. The mean legibility score was 2.53 ± 0.51 out of a possible score 4. The findings of our study show that there is a need for improvement in the quality of prescription written by Nigerian doctors. The adoption of a computer –aided prescribing system would go a long way in achieving this objective.

Knowledge of Medical Ethics among Nigerian Medical Doctors

Background: The knowledge of medical ethics is essential for health care practitioners worldwide. The main objective of this study was to evaluate the knowledge of medical doctors in a tertiary care hospital in Nigeria in the area of medical ethics. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional questionnaire-based study involving 250 medical doctors of different levels was carried out. The questionnaire; apart from the bio-data; also sought information on undergraduate and postgraduate training in medical ethics; knowledge about the principles of biomedical ethics and the ethical dilemmas encountered in daily medical practice. Results: One hundred and ninety (190) respondents returned the filled questionnaire representing a response rate of 76 . One hundred and fifty-two respondents (80) have had some sort of medical ethics education during their undergraduate level in the medical education. The median duration of formal training or exposure to medical ethics education was 3.00 hours (range: 0-15). One hundred and twenty-nine respondents have read at least once the code of medical ethics of the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria while 127 (66.8) have some general knowledge of the principles of biomedical ethics. The breakdown of the identified ethical dilemmas shows that discharge against medical advice was the most identified by the respondents (69.3) followed by religious/cultural issues (56.6) while confidentiality was recognized by 53.4 . Conclusion: The knowledge of medical ethics by Nigerian medical doctors is grossly inadequate. There is an urgent need for enhancement of the teaching of the discipline at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels in Nigeria