Betamethasone cream: usage and packaging cost in Hospital Sultanah Bahiyah Alor Setar

Every drugs received by patients must undergo a series of process from diagnosis of the disease by the physicians, prescribing of drugs and dispensing the drugs prescribed to the patients by pharmacists. ln every hospital, usually the study of drug prescribing pattern is essential to ensure the effectiveness and compliance of drugs use among patients. However the prescribing pattern of the drug also gives some impact to the patients as they will be affected by the quantity of medications supplied to them especially among patient with skin diseases such as eczema and pruritus. Many patients with serious skin conditions such as severe eczema and psoriasis will be prescribed by quite large amount of medications that have been repacked into standard size such as 30g container. Unfortunately there is not much of research that had been clone regarding the relationship between prescribing pattern that will show the usage of the creams with the size of container to be supplied to the patients. To the patients that are prescribed with small amount of medication, they may not have problem regarding the number of container that will be received, however to the patients that are prescribed with a larger amount of medications and previously being supplied with at least more than 3 containers of the same size and type or medicine, they may have some sort of trouble such as confusion especially with patients who were prescribed with other external creams. This is why this study is conducted, to see usage by looking at the prescribing pattern of the external preparation and the need of the change in size of the container packaging in order to improve the quality of services provided by pharmacy and also ease patients. The subject of this research is betamethasone cream with different strengths which are betamethasone 0.1 %, betamethasone 0.05%, betamethasone 0.025% and betamethasone 0.0 I%. Data was collected retrospectively reviewing prescriptions by months from .lune 20 I 6 till June 2017 that contains the order of betamethasone cream with different arnount for each strength to see the total consumption of the cream. Aftier being analysed, this study can be concluded that there is a need in change of size of the Betamethasone cream or the strength 0.1 %, 0.05% and 0.025%.