ArticleDrug, healthcare and patient safety2023
Evaluation of Rational Drug Use Based on WHO/INRUD Core Drug Use Indicators in a Secondary Care Hospital: A Cross-Sectional Study in Western Uganda.
Article in Drug, healthcare and patient safety, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed.
- Prescription Analysis in the Digital Era: Comparing Artificial Intelligence-Based Versus Manual Approaches.Cureus · 2026Article
- Problems associated with the ATC system of drug classification.Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's archives of pharmacology · 2026Article
- Antidiabetic prescribing patterns, quality, and economic influence in resource-limited settings: evidence from a Pakistani tertiary care hospital using WHO/INRUD indicators.BMC health services research · 2026Article
- Article
- Article
- Irrational medicine use and its associated factors in conflict-affected areas in Mali: a cross-sectional study.Global health action · 2025Article
- Knowledge and practices of anti-malarial treatment for children under five years among village health teams in Kasese District, Uganda: A cross-sectional study.IJID regions · 2025Article
- Assessment of dispensing practices and patient's knowledge of dispensed medicines in a hospital pharmacy, Ethiopia.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Assessment of drug utilization evaluation and post-dispensing knowledge of ophthalmic medications: an explanatory sequential mixed-methods study at the University of Gondar Comprehensive Specialized Hospital, Northwest Ethiopia.BMC health services research · 2025Article
- Digital platform for prescription analytics and antibiotic surveillance in an outpatient department setup.Indian journal of pharmacology · 2025Observational
- Prospective Drug Utilization Evaluation Analysis in Outpatient Departments with Ear, Nose, and Throat Outpatients: Incorporating Benchmarks and World Health Organization Indicators.Turkish journal of pharmaceutical sciences · 2024Article
- Evaluation of Rational Medicines Use Based on World Health Organization Core Indicators: A Cross-Sectional Study in Five Health Districts in Mauritania.Integrated pharmacy research & practice · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Purpose: Rational drug use (RDU) promotes safe, efficient, and cost-effective utilization of medicines in hospital settings. The aim of this study was to assess rational drug use based on the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Network for Rational Use of Drugs (INRUD) core drug use indicators. Patients and Methods: This prospective, descriptive, hospital-based cross-sectional study was conducted among patients attending the Outpatient Department of a secondary care hospital located in the Sheema District of Western Uganda. A total of 450 prescriptions were prospectively collected from eligible patients and subjected to evaluation by using the WHO/INRUD core drug use indicators (prescribing, patient care, and health-facility indicators). Results: The average number of drugs prescribed per encounter was found to be 3.2 (optimal value=1.6-1.8). The percentages of drugs prescribed by their generic name (90.48%) and from the Essential Medicine List (96.23%) were close to the WHO reference (100%). The percentage of antibiotics (66.22%) and injections (25.22%) per encounter exceeded the WHO standards (antibiotics=20.0-26.8; injections=13.4-24.1). Among the patient-care indicators, the average consultation time (5.41 minutes), average dispensing time (131.03 seconds), percentage of medicines dispensed (76.11%), percentage of medicines adequately labeled (59.74%), and percentage of patients with dosage knowledge (49.50%) did not meet the WHO reference. Facility indicators such as the percentage of key medicines available in the stock (66.67%) did not conform to the WHO optimal value. The hospital made the EML hundred percent available to all practitioners. Conclusion: The study concludes that the prescribing, patient care, and health facility indicators at Sheema District Secondary Care Hospital deviate from the optimal values recommended by the WHO. Therefore, this study indicates a need for improvement on these indicators and a requirement for the ongoing educational initiatives focused on rational drug prescribing, dispensing, and patient use in order to comply with the standards set by the WHO.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.