Noncompliance with prescription writing requirements and prescribing errors in an outpatient department (original) (raw)
Related papers
2013
A B S T R A C T Introduction: Prescription is an order for medication issued by a properly licensed medical practitioner to the pharmacist. The prescription should be clearly written, free from writing errors, and fulfil the legal requirements. The prescription writing errors leads to the medication errors, which in turn leads to failure of therapeutic goals. Objective: A nine month prospective study was carried out to determine the prescription writing errors at a Teaching Hospital. Results: A total of 290 prescriptions were randomly collected from out patients visiting the study site, and analyzed. Among them 635 errors of omission related to prescribers and 184 errors of omission related to the drugs with an average of 2.18 and 0.63 errors per prescription respectively. The errors of omission related to prescribers were due to failure to mention signature of prescriber 27(9.31%) followed by diagnosis 27(9.31%), prescribers name 261(90%), patients weight 290(100%) and 30(10.34%) w...
Indian Journal of Pharmacy Practice, 2014
Background: Drug therapy may not be successful if the process of writing prescription, dispensing and administration is not appropriately performed resulting into medication errors, which are unfortunately a reality in most health care settings. Approximately 30% of problems occurring during hospitalization are related to medication errors, causing great economic impact, serious morbidity and mortality. So it was thought of interest to study non compliance with prescription writing requirements and prescription errors in a community based setting. Methodology: The study was conducted in the community pharmacies for over a period of two months. The new prescriptions were screened prospectively to assess non compliance for one or more of the legal or the procedural requirements of prescription writing and was recorded in a standard data collection form. Result: Of the 1488 prescriptions screened during the study, 98.7% had one or more of the legal or procedural requirements missing. These errors of omission are patient's age, gender, weight, dose, frequency, course prescribed. Errors of commission involved related to dosage form 4.91% and Polypharmacy 58%. These errors occurred in considerable number regarding important variables involving all health care professionals working in patient care. Conclusion: The study shows a low compliance to the legal and procedural requirements for prescription writing and denotes significant scope to educate and emphasize the importance of writing clear and complete prescriptions to avoid medication related injuries, thus evidencing the need of constant evaluation of these events in order to prevent them and assure greater safety and success in the therapy.
Errors and omissions in hospital prescriptions: a survey of prescription writing in a hospital
BMC Clinical Pharmacology, 2009
The frequency of drug prescription errors is high. Excluding errors in decision making, the remaining are mainly due to order ambiguity, non standard nomenclature and writing illegibility. The aim of this study is to analyse, as a part of a continuous quality improvement program, the quality of prescriptions writing for antibiotics, in an Italian University Hospital as a risk factor for prescription errors.
2014
ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE ABSTRACT ARTICLE INFORMATION Background: Correct prescription writing habits could have a great influence on the fate of drug therapy as well as the health of patients. The aim of the study was to determine the prescription writing errors from the outpatient department of pediatrics in a teaching Hospital. Subject and methods: A nine month hospital based prospective study was carried out after obtaining ethical clearance certificate. A total of 220 prescriptions were randomly collected and analyzed. Results: Among them 279 errors of omission related to prescriber and 236 errors of omission related to drugs with an average of 1.26 and1.07 error per prescription were reported respectively. Among errors of omission related to the prescriber, prescribers name was not written in 215 (97.72%) followed by weight18 (8.18%) and illegible prescriptions were 18(8.18%). Regarding errors omission related to the drugs, duration/no. of doses was not mentioned in124 (53.36...
Medication Prescribing Error:A Source of Concern
Journal of applied pharmacy, 2015
Background: There are different types of medication errors which are experienced by the pharmacists in hospital settings.In Pakistan number of attending Pharmacist per bed is low and is a major cause of fatal and life threatening events. Aim: The aim of present retrospective study was to assess the extent and type of medication error in inpatient medical charts. Method: The physician’s orders were analyzed by the clinical pharmacists in hospital setting during 2007- 2008 in different wards. Various types of prescription errors had been reported and expressed in percentages. Result:Out of 450 medical treatment charts, 381 medication errors were found in 350 charts. The highest rate of error was the wrong dose (25%) prescribed by physicians.Infrequent errors were lack of dosage frequency, protocol for treatment, dosage form and continuation of antibiotic after prescribed treatment days. However, most frequently occurring serious errors were wrong dosing frequency (17%) and no dose adj...
Causes of prescribing errors in hospital inpatients: a prospective study
The Lancet, 2002
Background To prevent errors made during the prescription of drugs, we need to know why they arise. Theories of human error used to understand the causes of mistakes made in high-risk industries are being used in health-care. They have not, however, been applied to prescribing errors, which are a great cause of patient harm. Our aim was to use this approach to investigate the causes of such errors.
Evaluation of prescription errors in hospital and other clinical setups of Pakistan
Patients visit physician clinic or admitted in hospital are at high risk for prescribing errors and related adverse drug events (ADEs). An effective intervention to decrease this risk, based on studies conducted mainly in Lahore by the participation of a clinical pharmacist in retail setup. As in Pakistan Healthcare System is organized differently and the role of clinical pharmacists in retail is not well established, we conducted an intervention study to investigate whether participation of a clinical pharmacist can also be an effective approach in reducing prescribing errors and related patient harm (preventable ADEs) in this specific setting. Aims of the Project: Evaluate the prescription errors in the retail pharmacies, prescription written by the general physicians for the patients that admitted in the public hospitals or patients that visits the private clinics. To checked following things in prescribing medications: 1. Omission errors 2. Dose directions 3. Legal requirements 4. Quantity 5. Duration of therapy And compare prescribing medications with national guidelines and evidence based best practice. Identify possible errors in prescriptions and make appropriate recommendations. Methods: A prospective study compared a baseline period with an intervention period. During the intervention period, aclinical pharmacist reviewed medication orders for patients that come with prescription in pharmacy, noted issues related to prescribing, formulated recommendations and discussed those during patient review meetings and with physicians (in some cases). Prescribing issues were scored as prescribing errors when consensus was reached between the clinical pharmacist and physicians. Results: During the 1-month study period, medication orders for 100 patients were reviewed. During the intervention period, the rate of consensus between the clinical pharmacist and physicians was 4%. The incidence of prescribing errors during the intervention period was significantly lower than during the baseline period. The following is the percentage of different types of errors. Omission Errors 41%, Dose Direction Error 11.25%, Legal Requirements Errors 55%, Quantity Mentioned Error 15%, Duration of Therapy Error 41.25%. Conclusions: In retail setup it is seen that participation of a clinical pharmacist was associated with significant reductions in prescribing errors and related patients harm.
Outpatient prescriptions practice and writing quality in a paediatric university hospital
Swiss Medical Weekly, 2012
BACKGROUND: The writing of prescriptions is an important aspect of medical practice. This activity presents some specific problems given a danger of misinterpretation and dispensing errors in community pharmacies. The objective of this study was to determine the evolution of the prescription practice and writing quality in the outpatient clinics of our paediatric university hospital. METHODS: Copies of prescriptions written by physicians were collected from community pharmacies in the region of our hospital for a two-month period in 2005 and 2010. They were analysed according to standard criteria, including both formal and pharmaceutical aspects. RESULTS: A total of 597 handwritten prescriptions were reviewed in 2005 and 633 in 2010. They contained 1,456 drug prescriptions in 2005 and 1,348 in 2010. Fifteen drugs accounted for 80% of all prescriptions and the most common drugs were paracetamol and ibuprofen. A higher proportion of drugs were prescribed as International Nonproprietary Names (INN) or generics in 2010 (24.7%) compared with 2005 (20.9%). Of the drug prescriptions examined, 55.5% were incomplete in 2005 and 69.2% in 2010. Moreover in 2005, 3.2% were legible only with difficulty, 22.9% were ambiguous, and 3.0% contained an error. These proportions rose respectively to 5.2%, 27.8%, and 6.8% in 2010. CONCLUSION: This study showed that fifteen different drugs represented the majority of prescriptions, and a quarter of them were prescribed as INN or generics in 2010; and that handwritten prescriptions contained numerous omissions and preventable errors. In our hospital computerised prescribing coupled with advanced decision support is eagerly awaited.
International Journal of Basic and Clinical Pharmacology, 2015
A prescription is a health care program implemented by a physician or other medical doctors in the form of instructions that govern the plan of care for an individual patient. Prescriptions may include orders to be performed ABSTRACT Background: The goal of drug therapy is the achievement of defined therapeutic outcomes that improve a patient's quality of life while minimizing patient risk. Medication error is an important cause of morbidity and mortality, yet it can be a confusing and under-appreciated concept. Methods: A total of 3000 prescriptions were selected using Systematic Random Sampling, and prescription errors were stratified according to nuisance they may cause by dispensation followed by identification of Root Causes of the errors. Results: Out of a total of 3000 prescriptions, 2394 prescriptions (70.61%) were found to have one or more errors. The total number of errors were 3390 as many prescriptions had more than one error. The most common type of errors was Type D and was found in 70.61% prescriptions. Conclusions: Learning more about medication errors may enhance health care professionals' ability to provide safe care to their patients. Hence, A focus on easyto-use and inexpensive techniques for medication error reduction should be used to have the greatest impact.