To assess the rationality of pharmacotherapy of patient in clinical situations and validation of questionnaire tool used in rational pharmacotherapy

Abstract

: To provide a structured tool to assess rationality based on the 10 domains of Rationality score; To find out the impact of the structured tool for judging the rationality score of Pharmacotherapy in various clinical situations e.g. High, Moderate and Low rationality score. A rationality scale was developed to check the coefficient of variation in each parameter of rationality, on a scale of 1 to 10, acronymed as R.A.T.I.O.N.A.L.I.T.Y.Various clinical cases were discussed and treatment was criticised if any. These cases were then rated according to the rationality scale. High Rationality - Score ≥ 6, Average Rationality – Score > 4 and < 6 & Low Rationality - score ≤ 4.For high rationality score, the top 5 parameter are availability of drugs, lab monitoring, rational combination, Protocol/Regime and if objectives of treatment fulfilled.For average rationality scores, the top 5 parameters are Objective of treatment, Availability of drugs, Treatment correctness, lab monitoring and Protocol/Regime followed.For low rationality, the lowermost 5 parameters were cost of therapy, irrational combination, lab monitoring, use of trade names instead of generic names and availability issues starting from the lowest. Parameters like availability of the drugs, lab monitoring, presence or absence of irrational combinations are critical and common judgement parameters while judging if the therapy is rational or not.