Abstract
Background: Irrational use of medicine includes the use of too many medicines, inappropriate use of antimicrobials, overuse of injections, and vitamins increased among private practitioners. That leads to reduction in the quality of drug therapy, wastage of resources, increased treatment costs, increased risk for adverse drug reactions, and emergence of drug resistance. A lot of emphases is given by the WHO on the rational use of drugs and rational prescribing.

Aims and Objective: This study was planned to assess the rationality of prescriptions between private practitioners and physicians of a tertiary care hospital in a semi-urban area in India. Materials and Methods: Data were collected randomly over 2 months from the hospital pharmacy for tertiary care physicians and from private medical stores for private practitioners and analyzed for average number of drugs per prescription, prescribed by generic and brand name, essentiality and rationality of prescriptions, fixed dose combinations prescribed, and category of the drug prescribed.

Results: Average no of drugs per prescription was 2.66 by tertiary care physicians and 3.34 by private practitioner. Drugs prescribed as a generic name by tertiary care doctors are 42.78% and by private practitioners only 17.13%. 72.62% prescriptions of tertiary care physicians and only 32.09% prescriptions of private practitioners were rational.

Conclusion: More number of drugs prescribing as well as irrational prescribing is very much prevalent among the private practitioners. Furthermore, antibiotic prescribing is very much high among the private practitioners which might increase antibiotic resistance.