As part of the statewide initiative, the Vellore unit of the Tamil Nadu Health System Project(TNHSP) has taken the lead in organising a series of training programmes for doctors attached to the government hospitals and PHCs on the ‘rational use of drugs’, ‘prescription audits’, and ‘pharmacovigilance’, to improve quality care and reduce the risk associated with medication errors.
According to TNHSP district coordinator Dr Kennedy, the first phase of training camps for the medicos in the health unit districts of Vellore and Tirupattur were inaugurated recently in which around 150 of them participated.
A team of senior doctors from Vellore, including Dr Bharani, Dr Noorusayeed and Dr Illango, who had already received the training in this connection, were the trainers and resource persons for the training programme.
The second phase of the training would begin soon.
The training was aimed at empowering medicos to take proper decisions on drugs since any drug, no matter how trivial its therapeutic actions, has the potential to harm, Kennedy said.
The anticipated benefit from any therapeutic decision must be balanced by the potential risks. Elderly patients and those who receive multiple drugs are more prone to suffer from Adverse Drug Reactions(ADR) though 30 per cent of ADRs are preventable.
By detecting ADR and the risk factors associated with it at an early stage, the treatment could be made safe and the ‘medicine morbidity’ could be avoided.
On the other hand, increase in the number of drugs available had complicated the choice of drug prescription for a particular indication. Increase in the cost of treatment with newer drugs would burden the public and the government. This could be reduced by the rational use of drug use and this was the theme of the training Kennedy pointed out.
Sufficient inputs were provided to avoid medication errors that could happen during prescription, transcription, dispensing, administration and discharge advice. The doctors were also advised to follow standard treatment guidelines involving simplicity, credibility, drug supply based on standards, protocols and algorithms.
The participants were also given hands-on training on how prescription audits helped in reducing the use of unnecessary drugs such as injections, antibiotics and how it helped in improving the rational use of drugs, Kennedy added.