A Prospective Observational Study on Medication Error in a Tertiary Care Teaching Hospital

Abstract

PURPOSE: Medication errors (MEs) are the major cause of morbidity and mortality, yet they remain a confusing and underappreciated concept. In past few years, medication errors (MEs) are the major cause of morbidness and fatality rate, yet they remain a confusing and insignificant concept. The purpose of the study was to determine and analyze the severity of Medication Errors (MEs) and knowledge of HCPs towards MEs. METHODOLOGY: A prospective observational study was carried out for a period of 6 months (September 2018 to February 2019), irrespective of the departments in a tertiary care teaching hospital. The medication charts were analyzed on the basis of their different subtypes as dispensing errors, prescribing errors, administration errors. In addition to this, DDIs were also evaluated using online databases like Medscape and Drugs.com. Moreover, the questionnaire was administrated to the Healthcare Professionals (HCPs) to study their knowledge regarding the assessment and the reporting of medication errors. RESULTS: Descriptive analysis was carried out using SPSS v 17. A total of 212 prescriptions were analyzed during the study which included a total of 1547 drugs. The prescription errors (25%), dispensing errors (0%) and administration errors (75%) were the most common type of medication errors observed during the prescription analysis. The questionnaire administered to the HCPs showed that HCPs possess good knowledge about medication errors. CONCLUSION: The study shows that there is a need to sensitize HCPs about medication errors at different levels to avoid prescribing, dispensing and administration errors. There is need to educate health professionals regarding medication errors in order to avoid life threatening conditions. There is need to pay attention on OPD patients.

Keywords: Clinical pharmacology, drug-drug interaction, medication errors, prescription analysis,  prospective study 

Cite this Article

S. Singh, S. Gupta, B. K. Agarwal. A Prospective Observational Study on Medication Error in a Tertiary Care Teaching Hospital. Research & Reviews: A Journal of Pharmacology. 2020; 10(3):
1–5p.