The separation system of pharmacy and clinic has begun on the purpose of preventing drug misuse and abuse since July 1st of 2000. The system revealed some conflicts between doctors, pharmacists and consumers. Consequently pharmaceutical law and related policies undergone some change.
Now in an early period of the implementation of the system, the necessity to examine relevance of those policies and law enforcement to medical doctors´ prescriptions pattern evolves. This study tries to verify the pattern through a field study.
For the purpose, 930 prescriptions collected in May of 2001, from a pharmacy located in Gangnam-gu in Seoul, were analysed. The prescriptions were issued from several clinics: 459 prescriptions from otorhinolaryngological clinic(ENT), 177 from internal medicine clinic(IM), 130 from ophthalmic clinic(Opt), 52 from obstetric and gynecologic clinic(OB & GY), and 112 from miscellaneous clinics. ENT, IM, Opt, OB & GY are situated in a clinic building of 40m distance. The general findings are following:
1) 88.8% of the total patients came from 5clinics in nearby single clinic building.
2) Average prescribing days were 6.2 days and the average number of used drugs were 4.0 drugs, i.e. 2-4 times of WI-IO criteria 1-2 drugs.
3) Use of antibiotics in the oral administration drugs rated 71.8%(WHO; 22.7%).
4) Use of injection rated 31.3%(WHO; 17.2%)
5) 96.2% of the patients use multiple antibiotics in the injection and oral administration together.
6) The patients had multiple disease : ENT patients 1.7 disease and IM patients has 2.7 disease in average and several regular prescribing types evolved particularly in the ENT prescription.
With this result we found that drugs, especially antibiotics are still abused a lot, and there were significant differences in the number of used drugs and prescrbing days between the clinics. It implies somes differences of the preparation work and time for pharmacists. And preparation can be done in advance by pharmacists´ own efforts through noticing regular prescribing types.
The study suggests the followings:
1) Patient counseling should be done to minimize the incidence of adverse events.
2) The enforcement of the standardized differential preparation price system should be reconsidered.
3) Preparation of typical regularly appeared prescription in advance, which is regarded as "a prearranged work between doctors and pharmacists" and has been prohibited should be reconsidered.
4) Drug utilization review program should be established to prevent drugs abuse, especially antibiotics abuse.
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