Study and Evaluation of Medication Errors in a Tertiary Care Teaching Hospital

This study was conducted to detect and evaluate the incidence, types of medication errors and to assess the severity of medication errors in Navodaya Medical College Hospital and Research Centre, Raichur, Karnataka. It was a prospective observational study of 6 months duration. Patients who were admitted to general ward, semi ward and ICU ward irrespective of age, sex and conditions were included in the study. In-patients records of patients were reviewed during their hospital stay. Detected medication errors were documented and evaluated. A total of 600 cases of the patients were randomly selected, 89 medication errors were detected in 76 patients, in this 68(89.47%) cases had only one error and remaining 8(10.53%) had more than one error during their hospital stay. A total 89 medication error were observed among them 57.3% were errors in prescribing medication, 12.36% were errors in medication dispensing and 30.34% were errors in medication administration. Most of the medication errors were 57.30% due to physicians, 30.37% due to Nurses and 12.36% due to Pharmacists. The causes for prescribing errors were due to 33.34% class duplication, for dispensing error 72.73% due to wrong dose and for administration error 70.37% due to omission error. Majority of medication error were belonging to antibiotics 26.97%. On evaluation of severity, majority of medication errors, 73.03% were classified as category, Error, No harm followed by 26.97% were in category No error.The study concluded that 14.3% medication error were detected during study period and revealed that pharmacist can play a major role in preventing these errors by early detection.