Use of Triggers to Detect Adverse Drug Reactions of Gastrointestinal Tract in Outpatient Department

The use of “triggers”, clues to identify Adverse Drug Events (ADEs) is an effective method for measuring the overall level of harm from medications in a health care organization. The use of multiple medications is a serious problem in current health care system. To detect the Adverse Drug Reactions (ADR) in gastrointestinal drugs by using trigger tool methodology was done in civil hospital and one of the private hospital of Nashik city. It includes enrolment of the patient in Out Patient Department (OPD) according to Inclusion Criteria (IC) and Exclusion Criteria (EC). The patient was selected by using consecutive sampling method. Written informed consent was taken from recruit patient by using informed consent form. Once the informed consent was obtained, patient's prescription was studied and was followed every 7 days by telephonic conversation and every month in OPD. Prescription was studied and analysed by observing the prescription of the patient by using predetermined triggers associated with possible adverse drug event for next seven days. After finding specific trigger we kept record of all finding on ADE report form. Total number of prescriptions was considered and total number of Triggers was calculated in percentage. Total number of positive triggers which had shown ADR was calculated accordingly. Out of 180 sample size total triggers were found to be 15 (8.3%), and ADR reported to be 7 (3.8%). We found 8 (4.4%) such triggers which could not detect any ADR. Improving trigger tools and applying them in analyzing the ADR will surely detect the ADR and reduce the risk and harms in patients.