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Approximately one thousand prescriptions for outpatients are issued daily in our hospital. Although most of the outpatients took the dispensed drugs on the same day. some of the patients did not take their drugs. Therefore, we analyzed the reasons why the patients did not take the drugs and the contents of prescriptions for one year from Oct. 1985 to Sep. 1986. About 930 out of 274,997 (equivalent to 0.3％ or 3.1 prescriptions per day) dispensed drugs were not taken by patients during the period. Department distribution was 56.0％ in Internal Medicine, 8.2％ Neurology, 6.7％ Dermatology and 4.8％ Ophthalmology, respectively. Distribution by pharmacological action was 20.0％ in Central Nervous System, 14％ Digestive System, 13.9％ Liver, 13.8％ Circulatory System. The Number of days of prescriptions was generally long, such as 28 days(49.8％) and 14 days(13.9％) and average was 19 days, 84.9％ of the patients took the drugs within the next 3 days. It was also found that the numbers of untaken drugs on prescribed day increased with increasing waiting time.
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