Medication Errors (MEs) are common in most health care system and are reported to be the seventh most common cause of death overall.

Identifying and resolving the medication errors will improve the patient safety and therapeutic outcome.

• To identify nature and extent of medication errors in general medicine wards.

• To assess cause of medication errors in general medicine wards.• To design strategies to prevent Medication errors.• To determine the predictors of medication errors in general medicine wards

Types of Medication errors in General Medicine Wards

Presented at. IACP Bangalore 22/2/2014

Medication errors in a Tertiary care setting: Can they be prevented? Abhimanyu Parashar, Sridhar Babu, Arjun Kaarthik, Himanshu Patel, Parthasarathi Gurumurthy

Department of Pharmacy Practice, JSS College of Pharmacy, Mysore, India.

INTRODUCTION

OBJECTIVES

METHODOLOGY

RESULTS

Personnel's involved in medication errors

Strategies to prevent ME’s

CONCLUSION

.

A B C D E F G H I

0

78

186

276

28

2 0 0 0

Categories of medication errors

Nu

mb

er o

f er

rors

No Error- AError, No Harm - B, C, DError, Harm- E, F, GError, Death - I

Clinician error Pharmacist error Nursing error Patient error0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

49%

15% 14%

24%

3.00%

Percentage of errors

Personnel involved

Pe

rce

nta

ge

of

err

ors

Mon

itorin

g er

ror

Compli

ance

erro

r

Dru

g du

plica

tion

Inco

rrect

dru

g se

lectio

n

Dru

g us

e with

out i

ndica

tion

impr

oper

dos

e

Wro

ng d

urat

ion

Wro

ng a

dmini

stra

tion

wro

ng fr

eque

ncy

wro

ng ti

me

no

instru

ction

for u

se o

f dru

g

alte

rnat

e do

sage

form

om

ission

erro

r

trea

tmen

t sta

rted

late

wro

ng fr

eque

ncy

wro

ng d

rug

wro

ng s

treng

th

alle

rgy

illeg

ible

pres

cript

ion

una

utho

rised

dru

g0

20

40

60

80

100

120

106

86

72

57

36 34

27

20 20 19 18 17 16 15 1410

40 0 0

Causes of Medication errors

Nu

mb

er

of

err

ors

Most common reasons for MEs in medicine wards were routine practice which needs to be more rationalized.. Most of the MEs can be prevented if patients are followed correctly. Hospital authorities must take necessary actions to control MEs which are easily preventable. Strategies to prevent MEs should be designed and affectively implemented

Outcome of Medication errors according to NCCMER classification

• Monitoring error: Occurs due to insufficient monitoring by cliniciansand can be prevented by systematically documenting medical records

•Compliance error: Patient counseling by clinical pharmacists andPrescribing in generic name is also useful

• Drug duplication: Prescribing by generic name in the treatment chart and prescriptions to avoid confusions

• Wrong frequency: Proper treatment chart review by clinical pharmacist and prescribing with consulting clinical pharmacists as needed

• Drug use without indication: Drug utilization evaluation may be done for such drugs and results can be presented to hospital authorities.

• A prospective observational study was conducted in general medicine wards for a duration of 6 months.

• Data collection was done and was assessed for the medication errors• Outcomes of medication errors was assessed using NCCMER classification

• Predictors of medication errors were determined.

• A total of 571 MEs were identified in 390 patients from 1910 patients reviewed. The incidence of MEs in GM wards was 20.4%.

71%

26%

2%

Prescribing error

Administration error

Dispensing error

LEVELS OF MEDICATION ERRORS

PA :17