A large study across nine diverse hospitals in the UK involved ward-based clinical pharmacists prospectively documenting prescribing errors at
the point of clinically checking admission or discharge prescriptions. They assigned error categories and severities in order to evaluate the
prevalence, type and severity of prescribing errors observed between grades of
prescriber, ward area, admission or discharge and the type of medication
prescribed.
The researchers found that of 4238 prescriptions evaluated, one or more
error was observed in 1857 (43.8%) prescriptions, with a
total of 3011 errors observed. Of these, 1264 (41.9%) were minor, 1629 (54.1%)
were significant, 109 (3.6%) were serious and 9 (0.30%) were
potentially life threatening. The strongest predictor of error was found to be the number of items on a prescription,
with the risk of error increasing 14% for each additional item.
Cross-sectional study of
prescribing errors in patients admitted to nine hospitals across North West
England Seden K, et al. BMJ Open 2013;3(1)
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