Evaluation of antibiotic prescribing patterns among inpatients using World Health Organization indicators: a cross-sectional study
Open accessAbstract
Objective: Even though antibiotic resistance is one of the most serious threats to global public health, it is becoming more common due to inappropriate antibiotic prescribing patterns. Thus, the purpose of this study is to assess antibiotic prescribing patterns among inpatients at an Ethiopian comprehensive specialized hospital. Methods: An institutional-based cross-sectional study was used. During the study period, data were collected from the charts of admitted patients in selected wards of Debre Tabor comprehensive specialized hospital. The World Health Organization's developed questionnaire and conventional antibiotic prescribing indicators were used to assess rational drug usage, with an emphasis on antibiotic prescribing trends. The data were analyzed using SPSS 25.0 statistical software. Results: For 861 patients admitted to medical and pediatric wards, a total of 1444 antibiotics were prescribed. Overall, 60.6% of inpatients were prescribed at least one antibiotic, with an average (mean ± SD) number of antibiotics prescribed per patient of 1.7 ± 1.6. During their hospital stay, patients were given antibiotics for an average (mean ± SD) of 6.4 ± 2.7 days. Furthermore, 83.3% of antibiotics were prescribed for therapeutic purposes, whereas 100% were provided for empiric purposes. Ceftriaxone was the most commonly administered antibiotic in the study settings (49.2%). During the study period, Debre Tabor comprehensive specialized hospital had access to 67.5% of key antibiotics. Conclusion: The antibiotic prescribing pattern in our study diverged from the World Health Organization-recommended guidelines. Furthermore, all antibiotics were given without a culture or sensitivity test in every case. Setting up an antibiotic stewardship program, introducing antibiotic use based on culture and sensitivity tests, and adopting institutional guidelines could all help to address this issue.
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Data were collected using a structured checklist that was pre-tested and developed based on the WHO data abstraction form and WHO AWaRe 2023 classification.
“Data were collected from the prescriptions of the outpatients, using a structured checklist that was pre-tested and developed based on the WHO data abstraction form for selected drug use indicators, and WHO AWaRe 2023 antibiotics classification framework7,8.”
From Antibiotic-prescribing patterns in outpatient departments from a tertiary care hospital in Manipur using WHO AWaRe classification (2025) · cites this paper as [8]
The Methodology sections ‘Data collection tools and procedure’ and ‘Data quality control’ describe a WHO-developed structured questionnaire, a standard data abstraction format, and pretesting. However, the study collected data from hospitalized patients, not outpatients, and our copy does not say its checklist was developed using the WHO AWaRe 2023 classification. (LLM, conf=0.89)
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- Authors
- Tadesse, T. Y., Molla, M., Yimer, Y. S., Tarekegn, B. S., & Kefale, B.
- Affiliations
- Debre Tabor University (ET)
- Clinical Pharmacy Unit, Debre Tabor Comprehensive Specialized Hospital, Debre Tabor, Ethiopia
- Bahir Dar University (ET)
- Corresponding author
- Kefale, Belayneh
- Venue
- SAGE Open Medicine
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2022-01
- Volume
- 10
- Pages
- 20503121221096608-20503121221096608
- ISSN
- 2050-3121 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC9118891
- OpenAlex
- W4285277142
- Cited by
- 29
- References
- 37
- Citations by year
- 2026: 9 · 2025: 11 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 2
- FWCI
- 3.24
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- SAGE Open Medicine (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Immunology and Microbiology › Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology › Antibiotic Use and Resistance
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Medicine › Antibiotic Resistance in Bacteria
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Geriatrics and Gerontology › Pharmaceutical Practices and Patient Outcomes
- Keywords
- antibiotic prescribing patterns, hospitalized patients, WHO prescribing indicators, antibiotic stewardship, empirical antibiotic therapy, ceftriaxone, antimicrobial resistance, culture and sensitivity testing, rational drug use
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