ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE Drug Utilisation Patterns in Children Admitted to a Paediatric General Medical Ward in Five Countries

The Author(s) 2015. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Objective To investigate and compare drug prescription patterns in children admitted to a paediatric general med-ical ward in five countries. Methods A prospective cohort study conducted on paediatric medical wards in the UK, Germany, Australia, Hong Kong (HK) and Malaysia. Data were collected over 3 months in each country except in Australia (1 month). All medications prescribed were classified according to the WHO Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical (ATC) classifi-cation. For each drug, frequency of prescriptions and patient exposures were calculated for ATC anatomical and therapeutic levels overall and by country. Results One thousand two hundred and seventy-eigh