DOCTORS ARE GODS :ARE YOU SURE YOU GOT THE RIGHT PRESCRIPTION ??? THINK AGAIN

yesterday when going through the newspaper suddenly I came through a news that a patient  suffered death just because of the contradiction of two drugs and I got the topic for my next post . So the question is how many of you think that writing prescription is the duty of doctors only ? let me tell you the answer doctors are for diagnosis of diseases and prescribing the salt but the prescription is prepared by a pharmacist he calculate the dose and also checks the prescription for contraindications . what we do we go to the doctors tell them about our disease get prescription ,purchase the drug and now we are ready to consume it without even knowing about our allergies or info about the dose of drugs and there side effects 

What are prescription errors

the prescription errors can be listed as follows :

1. wrong medicine prescribed
2. interaction becoz too many medicine prescribed
3. unnecessary medicine prescribed
4. medicines prescribed for wrong length of time
5. wrong dose prescribed
6. drug resistance

Why are prescription errors

there can be many type of errors few of them can be listed as follows :

1. no involvement of pharmacist
2. lack of knowledge
3. too many drugs
4. easy availability of powerful but toxic drugs
5. lack of market controls
6. due to bad handwritings

The duties of pharmacist (regarding prescriptions)

The duties of pharmacist regarding prescription can be given as follows:

1. Check the patient history
2. Get information about allergies 
3. Prepare the prescription 
4. Inform the patient about dose and its frequency
5. Dispense the drug

What i want to say is that a doctor is for the diagnosis of drugs he not for prescribing the drugs , a doctor do not know about  the dose , contradiction and mechanism of action of drugs the why they all want to specialize that area ? 

What government holds

Government is also responsible for all the deaths that are due to wrong prescription becoz there is:

1. No strong rules for the sales of drugs 
2. A very less no government posts for a pharmacist 
3. A policy that means doctors is sole medical worker

These are few of hundreds there are many more points about the government
wrong prescription (your free ticket to heaven) 

a wrong prescription may 

1. Cause immediate death
2. Make you suffer from allergies 
3. Can make you a victim of new disease
4. May affect your life style

@ case studies

there are numerous case of wrong prescriptions i am just explaining few of them to create awareness

Delhi the capital

If the study is any indication, the answer should be alarming. In Delhi, the rate of correct diagnosis was as low as 22 per cent and the rate of correct treatment was less than 50 per cent. This meant that patients in this study had only a one-fifth chance of having their disease diagnosed correctly and less than half got the correct treatment. The study focussed on primary care providers and in rural Madhya Pradesh it has found that in 42 per cent of the cases, unnecessary or even harmful treatment was prescribed.(courtesy :The Hindu)
According to W.H.O
Although there is no Indian data available on this topic, WHO lists the medication errors among the top 10 killers in the world. While a British National Health System survey in 2009 reported that 15% of its patients were misdiagnosed, an American study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2000 quantified this problem most effectively.
It said that there are 2,000 deaths every year from unnecessary surgery; 7,000 deaths from medication errors in hospitals; 20,000 from other errors in hospitals; 80,000 from infections in hospitals; and 106,000 deaths every year from non-error, adverse effects of medications. In all, 225,000 deaths occur per year in the US due to unintentional medical errors.(courtesy : The times of India)

RAPID FIRE FACTS :

1. Deaths in India : There are nearly about 400,000 deaths in india due to adverse drug reactions annually
2. A.D.Rs : there are about 720000 ADRs reported every year
3. U.S.A : there are about from 44000 to 98000 deaths in USA due to preventable medical errors
4. Norwegian Hospital : In one Norwegian Hospital one third of all indoor patients were there because of medicines not for disease.
5. 50 % of drugs prescribed are useless : WHO estimates that 50 percent of drugs prescribed are useless.
6. persons go below poverty line : 2.3 percent of persons go below poverty line every year due to cost of treatment.1.2 percent of this go down because of  expenditure on drugs-fifty percent of which  are useless. 

What can be done

1. Introduction of pharmacists to cross check and manage the prescription
2. Introduce computerised physician order entry system
3. Introduce computerized pharmacovigilance system
4. Keep proper safety for dispensing the drugs
5. A hospital should must have the data for drug interaction
6. Store patient history 
7. Ask patient about his allergies
8. Issue standard treatment guide 

So these are my views but what matters is that we must create awareness every pharmacist or doctor know what a misleading prescription can do but what about the person who are not medics. so come on justify your profession and make people aware .

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