BACKGROUND & PURPOSE: Drug utilization research evaluates the appropriateness of the prescriptions which is important in clinical practice. Psychotropic polypharmacy is a major problem in psychiatric practice, which can lead to the development of adverse effects of those drugs in patients. Therefore, this study was carried out to evaluate the utilization of psychotropic drugs being prescribed for various psychiatric illnesses.  MATERIALS & METHODS: A prospective, cross sectional, observational study was carried out in patients visiting the Psychiatric Out-Patient Department of B J Government Medical College and Sassoon General Hospital, Pune, INDIA; from December 2016 to May 2018. A total of 500 prescriptions were analysed using WHO Drug Use indicators and some other indicators.  RESULTS: Average number of drugs per prescription was 3.14 ± 1.18; while average number of Psychotropic drugs per prescription was 2.27 ± 0.90. 84.35% of the total drugs prescribed by Generic name. 43.89% and 41.67% of the total drugs were prescribed from National List of Essential Medicines 2015 and WHO Model List of Essential Medicines 2017, respectively. Antipsychotics was the most commonly prescribed group of Psychotropic drugs, while Olanzapine was the most commonly prescribed Psychotropic drug. 64.25% of the total drugs were prescribed from the hospital drugstore.  CONCLUSION: In the present study, drugs were prescribed rationally and judiciously. But there was a need to increase the prescription of drugs from essential drug lists. Apart from that, there was found a need to increase the availability of the commonly prescribed Psychotropic drugs in the hospital drugstore of the study institution.

Introduction: Drug utilization research evaluates the appropriateness of the prescriptions which is important in clinical practice. Hospital Pharmacy is the place where the data of prescriptions from all the Outpatient departments of the hospital can be gathered under one roof. Methodology: A cross-sectional, observational study was carried out in the Outpatient pharmacy of a tertiary care teaching hospital. The study was conducted over a period of 1 month on 400 prescriptions. Results: Average no of drugs per prescription was 2.40 ± 1.49. 30.25% of prescriptions contained an antibiotic. Beta lactam was the most commonly prescribed class of antibiotics, while Coamoxiclav was the most commonly prescribed antibiotic drug. 78.46% and 67.22% of the drugs were prescribed from NLEM and WHO list, respectively. Total 130 pDDIs were observed in all the 400 prescriptions surveyed, out of which 51 prescriptions were showing at least one pDDI. Conclusion: The rate of prescription of drugs from both the Essential drug lists was satisfactory. No injection was prescribed on OPD basis. Almost 87 % prescriptions were not having any potential drug-drug interaction (pDDI). All these observations highlight the rational prescription of drugs as per WHO Drug use indicators. The study highlights the need to minimize the percentage of antibiotics prescribed. Further studies are warranted to analyse the causes of Polypharmacy observed in some prescriptions in this study and to find ways to minimize it as much as possible.

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