Medication Errors: Reported Prescription Faults and Prescription Error

Abstract

The present study aimed to evaluate the trends of prescription\xa0 errors that did not caused any harm to the patients and the prescription errors that were identified before reaching to the patients in the year 2017 at a tertiary care hospital in Kingdom Saudi Arabia. Simple random sampling and sampling based on prescription errors that were identified, documented, and reported before reaching the patients in the first three quarters of 2017 were performed in present observational retrospective study. Descriptive analysis with D’Agostino & Pearson omnibus were applied for normality testing at 95% CI through one-sample t-test to compare the prescription errors that did not cause harm to the patients and were identified before reaching the patient in the first quarter (Q1), the second quarter (Q2), and the third quarter (Q3) of 2017. Total number of prescription errors that did not caused harm to the patients were 1,601 in Quarter 1 further decreased to 1,422 in Quarter 2 and then increased to 1,710 in Quarter 3 of 2017. Furthermore, the total number of prescription errors that did not cause harm to the patients were 1,601 in Quarter 1 further decreased to 1,422 in Quarter 2 and then increased to 1,710 in Quarter 3 of 2017. The current study revealed that prescription errors were common in the tertiary Hospital, Taif, Saudi Arabia. Therefore, educating the prescribers to reduce prescription errors through seminars, conferences, and workshops is essential. Also, a joint training exercise for the pharmacist and doctors would minimize the prescribing errors.