E-drug: Indicators for hospital in-patient drug prescribing (cont'd)
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Dear e-druggers,
I haven't seen many mails discussing the in-patient indicators issue
raised a while ago - I was hoping for some solutions to be proposed. I
am sure you've seen the information provided earlier by Richard Laing
regarding the studies of Hospital Drug & Therapeutics Committees in
Zimbabwe that are being undertaken. We should see some results of
these studies towards the end of the year, but not many of them have
offered any novel approaches to this issue. We are also currently
shifting the responsibility for the management of specialist drugs
(including procurement and monitoring & evaluation) to the central
hospital DTC's, and are setting up concurrent studies which should
give us some information also later in the year. Perhaps the answer
lies in the indicators themselves? It's so tempting to place great
emphasis on numbers - and aren't indicators just so much fun to use?
BUT could it be that qualitative research (? harder to do) combined
with indicators will give us more meaningful results? And do we
always need to make comparisons? Or is it change that we want to
achieve (and being able to produce the evidence of sustainable
change)?
Charon Lessing
Zimbabwe
e-mail: ndtpac@healthnet.zw
[I very much share Charon's concern. Also I had expected a good
discussion and contributions on possible in-patient prescribing
indicators and their use. After all, the first draft list of WHO/INRUD
prescribing indicators was generated by a group of essential drugs
professionals from developing countries during a workshop in
Yogyakarta in 1990. I would hope a similar "virtual" group exercise
could take place on E-drug this time. Charon has put down a number
of good starter questions above. Hilbrand Haak, E-drug moderator].
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