title: A study on the factors affecting the prescription of injection medicines in Iran: a policy making approach.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Inappropriate prescribing injection medicines can reduce the quality of medical care, patient safety, and leads to a waste of resources. Sufficient evidence is not available in developing countries to persuade policy-makers to promote rational drug prescription. The objective of this study is to assess some factors affecting the prescription of the injection medicines in Iran.
  
  
  METHODS
  In this descriptive-analytic study, the data of 91,994,667 selected prescription letters were collected by the Ministry of the Health and Medical Education (MOHME) throughout the country at the year 2011 which were analyzed through a logarithmic regression model.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Results of the study show that the percentage of the prescription letters containing injection items varied from 27 percent (in Yazd) to 57 percent (in Ilam). Also the impact of price on the prescription of the injection medicines was not significant (P=0.55). But the impact of the prescription of antibiotics and corticosteroid on injections were significant (P>0.05) and equal 0.44 and 0.65 respectively.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Increasing price of injection medicines as a policy towards reducing consumptions cannot be a successful policy. But reducing the use of antibiotics and corticosteroids can be a more effective policy to reduce the use of injection medicines.
authors.forename: Mohammad
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Meskarpour-Amiri
authors.forename: Nooredin
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Dopeykar
authors.affiliation: . hmrc1391@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Parisa
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Mehdizadeh
authors.forename: Ali
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Ayoubian
authors.forename: Zahra
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Motaghed
mesh_terms: D011307:Drug Prescriptions / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D004363:Drug Utilization / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006291:Health Policy; D006801:Humans; D007267:Injections / Q000191:economics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D007492:Iran; D011050:Policy Making; D010818:Practice Patterns, Physicians' / Q000706:statistics & numerical data