An audit of prescriptions in general medicine outpatient department in a tertiary care government hospital in Eastern India: a quality improvement project

Background: Prescriptions are an important link between physicians and patients. Any medication therapy can become ineffective if not communicated properly to the pharmacist and patient. Therefore, it’s important to maintain the quality of prescription-writing. Thus, we conducted a prescription audit in a tertiary-care hospital.Methods: 413 prescriptions having 1683 drugs were selected by convenience sampling. Adherence to 4 quality parameters, namely mention of date, allergy status, date of next visit, and whether or not the prescription was signed legibly, were observed for each prescription. 5 parameters viz. whether or not the drug was written in capital letters, whether the generic name of the drug was mentioned, and prescription of drug schedule, dose, and duration were evaluated for each drug separately. Frequency tables and appropriate bar plots were created.Results: Dates were mentioned in all prescriptions. There were 4.07±0.44 (mean±SD) drugs per prescription. Using capital letters and generic names was observed for 12% and 21% of the drugs. Dose, duration, and schedule were written for 51.4%, 98.6% & 98.7% drugs respectively. The next visit was mentioned in 61.7% cases. 21.8% prescriptions were signed legibly and only 0.5% prescriptions had allergy status.Conclusions: A significant scope of improvement was observed in signing the prescription legibly, mentioning next visit, using generic names, writing the drug names in capital letters, drug doses, and mentioning allergy status. Conducting regular audit-feedback-audit loops will improve the quality of health care delivery in a practical manner.

Maximum Aerobic Capacity of Underground Coal Miners in India

Miners fitness test was assessed in terms of determination of maximum aerobic capacity by an indirect method following a standard step test protocol before going down to mine by taking into consideration of heart rates (Telemetric recording) and oxygen consumption of the subjects (Oxylog-II) during exercise at different working rates. Maximal heart rate was derived as 220−age. Coal miners reported a maximum aerobic capacity within a range of 35–38.3 mL/kg/min. It also revealed that oldest miners (50–59 yrs) had a lowest maximal oxygen uptake (34.2 ± 3.38 mL/kg/min) compared to (42.4 ± 2.03 mL/kg/min) compared to (42.4 ± 2.03 mL/kg/min) the youngest group (20–29 yrs). It was found to be negatively correlated with age (r = −0.55 and −0.33 for younger and older groups respectively) and directly associated with the body weight of the subjects (r = 0.57 – 0.68, P ≤ 0.001). Carriers showed maximum cardio respiratory capacity compared to other miners. Indian miners VO2max was found to be lower both compared to their abroad mining counterparts and various other non-mining occupational working groups in India

Risk and associates of tobacco, alcohol and cannabis use among undergraduate university students – a Pan-India cross-sectional study

Introduction and aim. Substance abuse and its associated problems are a global concern. Young adults, particularly college-going students, remain among the highest at-risk groups for various substance use disorders. So, this study was conducted to find out the prevalence of substance use and its correlates among undergraduate (UG) university students. Material and methods. We did an online cross-sectional survey among 1003 undergraduate university students across India using a pre-structured, self-reported questionnaire consisting of basic demographic details, standard tool (WHO-ASSIST), and the results were tabulated. A multivariable binary logistic regression analysis was performed to find out the correlates of substance use and Pearson correlation to find a correlation between ASSIST scores. Significance was attributed to a p-value <0.05. Results. A total of 320 (31.9%), 167 (16.7%), and 125 (12.5%) among 1003 students used alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis respectively. 70 (21.9%), 116 (69.5%), and 62 (49.6%) were at moderate-high risk of abuse for alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis respectively. There was a strong positive statistically significant (p<0.001) correlation between all three substance-specific scores (Pearson’s Coefficients r = 0.643, 0.763, and 0.725 respectively). Conclusion. One, two, and three out of every ten students used cannabis, tobacco, and alcohol respectively. Many of them fall into the moderate-high risk category. The data suggest that a student at high risk for any one substance is also at a higher risk of using another substance as well. This calls for an integrated ‘bundle’ approach to focus on all substances together as one unit