To evaluate prescribing pattern in an inpatient setting of a public teaching hospital in India. Patient records were collected from general medicine wards of a public teaching hospital over a period of 7 months. The data were analyzed using WHO recommended prescribing indicators: The National List of Essential Medicines-2003 of India (NLEM-2003) was used to analyze prescribing from essential drug list. The results were presented as average±SEM, median (inter quartile range) and percentages, as applicable. A total of 710 inpatients’ records were analyzed. Over two thirds of patients (67.6%) had only one diagnosis and the average number of diagnosis was 1.4±0.02. The average number of medicines prescribed was found to be 7.3. The percentage of medications prescribed from NLEM was 65%. Approximately 14.6% medications were prescribed by generic names. The percentage of prescriptions with an injection(s) and antibiotic(s) were 85.9% and 68.6%, respectively. This study has provided real-time evidence that the prescribers in public teaching hospital were aware of the NLEM-2003. There are areas, in addition to this, which require consolidation to promote rational drug therapy.