Abstract: Objective To analyze the outpatient and emergency prescriptions in our hospital, and to understand the situation and cause of irrational drug use, in order to find out measures to improve prescription quality and promote rational drug use. Methods By the way of combining software review and manual review, the using rationality of medicines, which were used in our hospital's outpatient and emergency in October 2017, were evaluated, and the result was analyzed, while Pareto chart analysis was used to find out the main and minor factors of irrational prescriptions in outpatient and emergency. Results There were 76 598 prescriptions used in our hospital's outpatient and emergency, while the number of irrational prescriptions was 3 706 accounting for 4.84%. Meanwhile, the number of prescriptions used in outpatient was 62 916 with 5.33% (3 354) being irrational. The main factors of drugs' misusing in outpatient were "usage or dosage disagree" and "indication mismatch", while the minor factor was "drugs' formulations or routes of administration disagree". 13 682 prescriptions were used in emergency, while 2.57% (352) of which was irrational. The main factors of drugs' misusing in emergency were "usage or dosage disagree" and "drugs' formulations or routes of administration disagree", and minor factor was "indication mismatch". Conclusion "Usage or dosage disagree", "indication mismatch" and "drugs' formulations or routes of administration disagree" were the main and minor factors of irrational drug use in our hospital's outpatient and emergency. The way to review all the prescriptions in outpatient and emergency and make Pareto chart analysis was helpful for a comprehensive understanding of current status and issues distribution in hospital's prescriptions, after that, targeted measures could be taken to effectively improve the quality of hospital's prescriptions and promote rational drug use.

Key words: irrational drug use, prescription review, Pareto diagram analysis