ABSTRACT

Medication errors are any preventable event that may cause or lead to inappropriate medication use or patient harm while the medication is in the control of the health care professional, patient, or consumer. Medication errors can cause significant morbidity and mortality in patients. The present study was conducted with the main objective to assess the medication errors and adherence to WHO prescription guidelines. A prospective observational study was conducted for a period of 6months in a tertiary care hospital including 208 patients. Data was collected by regular review of patient case records. The collected data is analyzed for identifying different types of medication errors. The reported errors were assessed for severity by using NCCMERP index. The prescriptions were also screened for adherence to WHO guidelines for prescription writing. Out of 208 patients, 186 medication errors were recorded. The prevalence of medication errors in the study were found to be 89% without any fatal outcomes, Majority of the errors recorded were prescribing errors(92%)followed by omission errors(51%)and most of the errors were under the NCCMERP Index Category-D(55%) and Category-C(24%). Most of the errors were recorded in the age group of 31-50 (39%). In our study errors were more in males(56%) than in females(44%).Majority of the errors were observed in antibiotics(35%) followed by antihypertensives(25%).Most of the errors were recorded in prescriptions containing 6-10 drugs(55%).Among 208 prescriptions, more than half of the prescriptions doesn’t have complete details of patient, physician, proper instructions to patient and pharmacist. Keywords: Medication errors, Preventable event, NCCMERP Index, WHO guidelines, Prescribing errors and Omission errors
Publication date: 01/02/2022

https://ijbpas.com/pdf/2022/February/MS_IJBPAS_2022_5896.pdf

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https://doi.org/10.31032/IJBPAS/2022/11.2.5896