Analysis of written prescriptions in emer gency service-retrospective 2-years study

Aim: The aim of this study is to analyse the medication prescribed to patients who admitted to the emergency service. Method and Materials: Ages, genders, ICD diagnosis codes, admission times and prescribed medications of patients who admitted to Gaziantep University Şahinbey Research and Application Hospital Emergency Service for 2 years between 01.06.2013 and 01.06.2015. SPSS 22.0 package program was used for statistical analysis. Results: The number of patients who admitted to Gaziantep University Şahinbey Research and Application Hospital Emergency Service between 01.06.2013 and 01.06.2015 is 358.437. 189.437 of these patients were male and 169.336 were female. 40.875 of these patients were referred to different departments for hospitalisation. 1010 of these patients died. 39.867 patients were referred to other institutions or discharged without prescription. 276.685 patients were prescribed. 140.573 (%50,8) of these prescribed patients were male and 136.112 (%49,2) were female. When we analyse the age class distribution, we observed that most of the admissions were between the range of 16-35 ages and number of these patients were 151.994. We found that most of the admissions were because of respiratory system diseases and they were coded as "J" according to ICD-10. Looking to the days when most admissions were made, there was no significant difference between weekdays and weekend. We found that female patients who admitted on Friday, Saturday and Sunday were more than male patients who admitted on these same days. We observed that the time range when most admissions were made was between 20.00-21.00 and least admissions were made was between 03.00-06.00 according to day time period distribution. It has been found out that 310.404 boxes of medication were prescribed and 97.682 (%31,6) of them were antibiotics. The next most frequent prescribed medication was painkillers with the number of 84.667 (%27,6). Conclusion: Emergency services are the facilities that every type of patient can admit 24 hours a day. Lots of patients choose to find a solution to their problems thorough emergency service as there isn't a referral system in our country. That is the reason that most of the medication prescribed thorough emergency service are antibiotics and painkillers. The most important indicator of this is the finding that most of the admissions were made during the hours when other health facilities were out of working hours.