Evaluation of drug prescribing pattern among pregnant women attending antenatal clinic at the 34 military hospital, Freetown, Sierra Leone

Background: Management of medical conditions in pregnancy is a challenge to clinicians. As a result, clinicians are faced with a quagmire in making evidence-based therapeutic decisions regarding patient management. No study has been conducted in Sierra Leone to determine drug prescription patterns among pregnant women.

Objective: This study assessed the prescribing pattern of drugs among pregnant women who attended antenatal care clinic at the 34 Military hospital in Freetown from May 1st, 2019 to October 31st, 2019.

Methods: A hospital-based cross-sectional retrospective study was conducted by reviewing medical charts of 314 pregnant women who attended antenatal clinic at the study site. The cases selected by simple random sampling were women who encountered at least one drug prescribed during their visit. The World Health Organisation (WHO) prescribing indicators and the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) pregnancy risk classification of medicines were used to assess drug prescribing patterns and contraindication in pregnancy respectively.

Results: Excluding minerals and vitamins, 99 (31.5%) of pregnant women from the 314 sampled for this study received at least one drug. Multivitamins/minerals 216 (40.3%) were the most frequently prescribed medicines. The average number of drugs prescribed per encounter was 1.7 with an index of polypharmacy of 0.86. The percentage encounters with an antibiotic and injection prescribed and drugs prescribed by generic names were 27.4%, 11.1%, and 40.0% respectively. About 221 (41.2%) of the drugs prescribed were from the FDA category A. No drug was prescribed from category X.

Conclusions: The prescribing pattern among prescribers was relatively rational, as three of the indicators met the WHO standard, with room for more improvement. The occurrence of contraindicated medicines was low as a high proportion of drugs were prescribed from FDA category A