Nature of Prescribing and incidence of medication prescription errors in general practice

Abstract

Introduction: Medication use involves a complex process that is subject to errors at many points in health care settings. According to the stage of the medication use cycle in which they occur, medication errors can be broadly divided into four levels prescription or prescribing, transcription, dispensing and administration errors. Prescription errors that constitute the bulk of medication errors are common in government as well as private setting. Materials and methods: Our study was aimed to analyse the prescription errors in general practice. The prescriptions were photographed after the consent of the patient and returned back to them. Almost all the prescriptions contained brand names which were then converted into their respective generic names and analysed for errors. Results: A total of 1015 prescriptions were analysed during a 15 month period. Out of these, 415 (40.88%) prescriptions had errors. A few prescriptions had more than one type of prescribing error. The total number of errors thus amounted to 577. Most of the errors were related to prescription of CNS drugs followed by chemotherapeutic drugs. Our study reveals that combination errors are the commonest followed by indication, dosing and kinetic types of prescription errors. Discussion: Medication errors are common in general practice and in hospitals and can result in harm to patients. We analysed the prescription errors into 4 categories- indication, dosing, kinetic and combination errors. The study revealed a maximum of combination errors thus confirming our assertion that doctors do not give proper thought when they prescribe FDCs.