ArticleBMC health services research2020
Assessment of completeness and legibility of handwritten prescriptions in six community chain pharmacies of Asmara, Eritrea: a cross-sectional study.
Article in BMC health services research, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 17 citations in OpenAlex.
- Community pharmacists' views on the implementation of a national electronic prescription transfer system to pharmacies: A cross-sectional survey.Exploratory research in clinical and social pharmacy · 2026Article
- Quality of prescription writing in Brazilian primary health care.Primary health care research & development · 2023Observational
- Assessment of Legibility of Handwritten Prescriptions and Adherence to W.H.O. Prescription Writing Guidelines in Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital Zaria - Kaduna State, Nigeria.Innovations in pharmacy · 2023Article
- Validation of the QualiPresc instrument for assessing the quality of drug prescription writing in primary health care.PloS one · 2022Article
- The short- and long-term effects of a course on rational drug use: A comparative study between prefinal- and final-year undergraduate medical students who attended the course in different clinical years.Journal of education and health promotion · 2021Article
- Hospital-Level Antibacterial Prescribing and Its Completeness in Ethiopia: Did It Adhere to Good Prescribing Practice?International journal of general medicine · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundIncompleteness and illegibility of prescriptions are prescription errors that account for a high proportion of medication errors that could potentially result in serious adverse effects. Thus, the objective of this study was to assess the completeness and legibility of prescriptions filled in the community chain pharmacies.
methodsAn analytical and cross-sectional study was conducted in the six government owned community chain pharmacies of Asmara, Eritrea from June 3rd to 10th, 2019 using a stratified random sampling technique. A total of 385 prescriptions were analyzed for completeness and legibility by three pharmacists (two experienced and one intern pharmacist). Descriptive statistics and multinomial logistic regression were employed using IBM SPSS® (Version 22).
resultsA total of 710 drugs were prescribed from the 385 prescriptions assessed. On average, a prescription was found to have 78.63% overall completeness. In the majority of the prescriptions, patient's information such as name, age, sex, and prescriber's identity were present. Prescribed drugs' information such as dose, frequency and quantity and/or duration were present in 83.7, 87.7, and 95.1% respectively. Moreover, generic names were used in 83.3% of the drugs prescribed. About half (54.3%) of the prescriptions' legibility were classified in grade four (clearly legible) and 30.6% in grade three (moderately legible). It was observed that legibility significantly increased with an increase in percentage completeness (r
conclusionMajority of the handwritten prescriptions received in the community pharmacies of Asmara are complete and clearly legible.
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