Medication Errors - An Understated Healthcare Menace: A Journey Through A South-Indian Tertiary Care Facility

Abstract

This research work targets to analyze and ascertain the epidemiological profile of medication errors occurred at a tertiary care hospital in South India. A retrospective cross-sectional investigation of medication errors by chart review method. The process involved assessment and interpretation of medication errors reported to and by the Department of Clinical Pharmacology from April 2016 to March 2020. Data was later analyzed employing descriptive statistics. A total of 11,314 medication errors [8,835 prescription errors and 2,479 non-prescription errors] were reported among 1,01,981 hospitalized patients, with an average incidence of 26.56 per 1000 patient days. More than a quarter of prescription errors were within the drug dosage modification subclass, whereas transcription errors were the most common non-prescription errors, around 70%. An appreciable portion of the total medication errors constituted by potential errors were prevented before reaching patients [9681, 85.56%] with timely interventions by health care professionals, remarkably by clinical pharmacists, over 96%. The study benchmarks how a well-designed voluntary reporting system provides a good way for identifying the emerging medication errors before they result in harm to the patients.  Ward-based clinical pharmacists in close liaison with health care professionals are effective in reporting and implementing interventions to prevent such unfortunate events, ensuring patient safety.