medication errors

Errors resulting in patient injury and death are occurring in hospitals at significantly high and unacceptable numbers. Evidence from a number of sources over several decades indicates that a substantial number of patients suffer iatrogenic injuries while in hospital. The main aims of this study was to detect, identify and document the onset, underlying cause, type of medication errors and assess the severity of medication errors in the outpatient departments of a south Indian hospital. A prospective observational study was conducted at outpatient departments of general medicine, surgery, pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, orthopedics in Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences, Kadapa for the period of 6 months. The study was approved by the Institutional Ethical Committee, RIMS, Kadapa. Approximately, a total of 1296 medications were prescribed in 390 cases, and the average number of medications prescribed per patient was found to be 3.37.The present study showed a high incidence of medication errors in females (73%) over males and (27.50%) of medication errors in patients between 13-30yrs.The present study showed that prescribing errors 347(96.38%) was the most common among the medication errorsMajority of errors encountered in Anti-microbial agents 84 (23.33%). Severity level assessment of medication errors revealed that majority of errors (84.99%) were fallen under the category-B, C&D (Error, No Harm). A clinical pharmacist can play a major role in this situation appears to be a strong intervention and early detection and prevention of medication errors and thus can improve the quality of care to the patients. Key words:Clinical pharmacist, evaluation, medication errors