Development and pilot testing of a prescription quality index for Ayurveda

ABSTRACT

Background: Prescription quality can be a direct predictor of the net outcome of a health care deliveryeffort. Quality of prescription may be considered as a cumulative matrix of multiple components of aprescription on the basis of their relative importance. Prescription quality index is a recognized tool inclinical medicine for multiple purposes including the prediction of health care intervention outcome.Objectives: Considering the importance of prescription quality among every system of medicine, anattempt was made to design a prescription quality index for Ayurveda.Materials and methods: The Prescription Quality Index for Ayurveda was designed through item selectionfollowing a thorough literature search and was validated through multiple peer group discussions. Finaldraft of index containing 38 individual items carrying different scores as per their importance in theprescription was subjected to a pilot test upon 1576 indoor prescriptions generated in 2015 at StateAyurvedic College Hospital, Lucknow.Results: The study revealed large information gaps in the components of the prescription where it wassupposed to be noted by the prescribers. These gaps in the Ayurvedic prescriptions were most significantin the areas pertaining to Ayurvedic fundamentals of clinical examination, disease diagnosis and Ayurvedic drug intake methods.Conclusion: Prescription Quality Index for Ayurveda was found useful in underlining the gaps betweenthe ideal and generated prescriptions. This can be utilized as a useful tool to evaluate the quality ofAyurvedic prescriptions by seeing their adherence to the standard prescription template.© 2017 Transdisciplinary University, Bangalore and World Ayurveda Foundation. Publishing Services byElsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http//creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).