Evaluación de la Calidad de las Prescripciones Médicas en el Área de Consulta Externa del Hospital Básico Pelileo, Provincia de Tungurahua

Abstract

The aim of this work was to evaluate the quality of medical prescriptions in the outpatient area at Hospital Básico Pelileo, Tungurahua province, by means of a descriptive, qualitative and retrospective study. The sample consisted of 945 prescriptions from patients who attended outpatient consultation during June - September 2020. For the collection of information, a data collection matrix and a survey were used; This survey was applied to the prescribing physicians at Hospital Básico Pelileo. For the statistical analysis, Excel 2016 and PSPP.0.8.5 were used. With the data obtained, it was identified that 44.78% of patients who attend medical consultation for diseases related to digestive, respiratory, genitourinary systems, etc., belong to the adult age group (27-59 years), with a higher percentage of females (32.39%). Among the prescription errors, illegibility (64.74%), omission of data (27.71%), incomplete data (5.78%) and other errors (1.79%) were found. Regarding the physicians surveyed, it was shown that the factors that most influence the quality of medical prescriptions are work-related stress (15.22%) and consultation time per patient (15.22%), followed by low capacity about the correct way of writing prescriptions (13.04%) and a lower percentage of other factors (1.09%). Based on the results obtained, there was a need to develop a protocol of Good Medical Prescription Practices and provide training on the correct medical prescription writing. It was concluded that within the Hospital Básico Pelileo there are prescription errors (41.38%) during the study time, the main cause was work-related stress (15.22%) due to excessive workload. It is recommended to apply the Good Medical Prescribing Practices protocol to improve the quality of prescriptions.