A Prospective Study: Effect of Medication Error in a Tertiary Care Hospital

Abstract

Background:

A study was carried out in a tertiary care hospital in Kolkata to investigate and gauge the prevalence of medication error. Prescription errors, dispatching errors, drug administration errors, and indenting errors are the different types of medicine errors. This study's objectives include identifying the prevalence and types of pharmaceutical errors, investigating their causes, and researching possible solutions.

Objective:

Determine and assess the failures in a Tertiary Care Hospital in Kolkata, and offer suggestions for lowering medication failures.

Design:

Survey analysis, based on incidents of medication errors from retrospective cohort studies.

Participants :

three-month patients who have been admitted, i.e. May, June, July

Methods :

The writing of medicine cards by trained observers like nurses, pharmacists, and doctors frequently results in medication errors. Data was collected by Clinical Pharmacist, who are highly trained to spot medication errors. Direct observation was used to carry out a prospective cohort research. In SPSS V20 and Excel V10, a descriptive study of the frequency and kind of medication errors was performed. To determine the median difference in error rates between the last three months' worth of error reports, the descriptive analysis was used.

Result : Most common error was in prescription error accounting for 99.8% of the 3935 errors. Dispensing error was associated with 0.0002% of overall error. And Indenting error was 0.0005% of overall error and administration error was 0.001% of overall error. In the last 3 months most of the cases incident reached the individual but did not cause harm. The overall error rate detected in this study were respectively may 1.53%, June 29.09% and July 35.40%.

Conclusion :

To prevent or eliminate medication error, a number of variables must be implemented in the healthcare system. Errors are often to blame for health care catastrophes. These mistakes with medications are frequently not the result of ineptitude, but rather of ignorance of the implications of a mistake and numerous other minor, avoidable causes. Numerous ongoing quality improvement initiatives are being carried out to track drug errors, which help to reduce overall error rates day by day.