The retrospective study of prescribing errors in written prescriptions / Majidah Abd Rahman

Medication errors defined as any preventable event that may cause or lead to inappropriate medication use or may harm the patient although the medication in under control of the health care professional. The consequences of medication errors may lead to the patients having adverse drug reaction, do not fully achieve therapeutic outcome and the worse may lead to death. Medication errors also may affect the patients' quality of life. The objective of this study is to determine the prevalence of variation in prescription errors in Outpatient Department, Hospital Tengku Ampuan Rahimah, Klang. The data collection of this retrospective research was conducted from 2nd May 2008 till 30th June 2008. The data were analyzed using Microsoft Office Excel (2003) programs and SPSS (Version 12.0). In May 2008, 345 out of 15225 prescriptions that needed pharmacist interventions were identified while in June 2008 327 out of 15404 prescriptions were identified. The highest type of prescription errors occurred was inappropriate regimens (65.6%). Within inappropriate regimens, inappropriate dose was the largest errors (26.2%). There were significant different for incomplete dose, inappropriate medicine and spelling errors between May 2008 and June 2008 (p<0.05). Other type of prescription errors shows no significant different between both months (p>0.05). Computerized physician order entry was suggested to replace traditional paper ordering system in order to reduce the occurrence of prescription errors.