Evaluation of Prescribing Practices of Antipsychotic Medications in Tertiary Health Institutions in Benin City, Nigeria

The aims of the study are to investigate the prescribing pattern and its’ trend using the WHO prescribing indicators. A retrospective study of outpatient’s prescriptions sheets from 2013 to 2017 in both facilities using systematic random sampling. Average number of drugs per encounter, percentage of prescriptions in generic name, percentage of antibiotics, percentage of injection encounter, drugs prescribed from essential drug list and DDD/1000 inhabitants/day were determined. Results obtained were that a total number of 2581 prescriptions from FNPH and 1857 prescriptions from UBTH were collected. Lowest average numbers of drugs per encounter in FNPH was 2.54 in 2014 while that of UBTH in 2014 gave 2.32. Highest percentage of medications prescribed in generic name was 96.67 in 2015 for FNPH and 91.91 in 2013 for UBTH. In FNPH, the number of persons on haloperidol on a daily basis decreased from10 in 2013 to 4 in 2017, while that of olanzapine increased from 3 in 2013 to 7in 2017. In conclusion, both facilities fell short of WHO indicators for average number of drugs per encounter, percentage of medicines prescribed in generic name. There was a decline in the prescribing of typical antipsychotics while that of atypical antipsychotics increased in FNPH.