Assessment Of The Current Prescribing Practices And Incidences Of The Prescription Error In A Tertiary Care Hospital

Abstract

Medication errors are one of the foremost common sorts of therapeutic blunder. Roughly 1–2% of conceded patients to the healing centres are endured since of the medicine blunders, the lion's share of the mistake happens at the time of endorsing, these mistakes can be possibly prevented. Prescription errors are common, by the help of daily systematic reviews of medication charts which suggest that as many as 50% of hospital admissions and 7% of medication orders are affected. A study of prescription pattern is an important tool to determine rational drug therapy, maximize utilization of resources and to reduce prescription errors. The prescriber should follow the proper guidelines for writing a prescription in order to minimize prescription errors. A prospective observational study was conducted for a period of 6 months in inpatients department of medicine and pulmonary ward of Shri Mahant Indresh hospital, Dehradun. A total of 217 subjects were observed from the medicine and pulmonary wards (IPD). Out of which 175 subjects were male and 42 were female, as compared to females, male’s patients were having more prescription errors (75.5%). An antibiotic was the class involved in majority of prescription errors. No generic drugs were prescribed. Abbreviations and allergy were the type of prescription errors identified with more incidences of error as compared to others. The study concluded that the lack of close supervision and absence of clinical pharmacist could have make things worse. Introduction of quality assurance measures and routine checks with close supervision of the prescribing intern physicians are strongly recommended.