BACKGROUND General practitioner (GP) prescribing accounts for about 10% of NHS expenditure. GPs at the top of the range have annual prescribing costs that are almost twice as much as those at the bottom of the range. This variation cannot be accounted for purely in terms of differences in underlying need for health care. OBJECTIVES To describe the relationship between GPs' prescribing costs a...

BACKGROUND Electronic prescribing (e-prescribing) can potentially help prevent medication errors. As the use of e-prescribing increases across Canada, understanding the benefits and gaps of early e-prescribing can help inform deployment of future e-prescribing systems. OBJECTIVE The purpose of this exploratory study was to determine the prevalence of, reasons for, and average time taken for p...

OBJECTIVE To examine differences in prescribing between dispensing and non-dispensing practices. SETTING The 108 practices covered by Lincolnshire Family Health Services Authority. DESIGN Analysis of prescribing data for 1990-1 from PD2 reports from the Prescription Pricing Authority in relation to data on practice characteristics obtained from Lincolnshire Family Health Services Authority;...

BACKGROUND If all GPs target their prescribing appropriately, then a positive relationship may be expected between targeting quality indicators and associated prescribing expenditure. Little is known about this relationship. AIM To explore the relationship between prescribing quality indicators and associated prescribing expenditures. DESIGN Observational study of prescribing expenditure an...

BACKGROUND As the main tool through which doctors treat the medically unwell, prescribing is a practice that is undervalued and under-taught within modern medicine. Paradoxically prescribing not only has the potential to cure, it also has the potential to cause great harm if carried out incorrectly and unsafely. CONTEXT Prescribing errors have remained an issue in patient safety for many year...

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES To examine the prescribing practices of nurse supplementary prescribing in diabetes. BACKGROUND Nurses in several roles are involved in the management of medicines for patients with diabetes. Nurse prescribing should help optimise these roles. Nurses in the UK have virtually the same independent prescribing rights as doctors. There is little or no evidence on the extent to...

Monitoring of general practice antibiotic prescribing is important to allow concordance with prescribing guidelines to be assessed. National Prescribing Analysis and Cost Data are limited by lack of information on the condition for which antibiotics are prescribed. Using the General Practice Research Database, we found that the 10 leading indications for antibacterial prescribing were (in desce...

Emerging evidence suggests that antimicrobial prescribing behaviors are influenced by local culture and a prescribing etiquette that is abided by all health care professionals. Local cultural unspoken rules often play a more pivotal role than the recommendations of guidelines and policies drawn up by experts in influencing antimicrobial prescribing. It is important to recognize the key drivers ...

Antibiotic resistance is an increasing problem in paediatric practice. General practitioners in the United Kingdom have consequently been exhorted to minimise antibiotic prescribing for childhood upper respiratory infections. However, some data suggest an association between reduced prescribing and an increased incidence of rare complications of bacterial infection. We report national data on c...

BACKGROUND Literature has shown that computerized creatinine clearance alerts reduce errors during prescribing, and applying human factors principles may further reduce errors. Our objective was to apply human factors principles to creatinine clearance alert design and assess whether the redesigned alerts increase usability and reduce prescribing errors compared with the original alerts. METH...