33 37 42 43 A recent UK review reported that prescribing error, inappropriate medication, drug administration errors, dispensing errors and adverse drug reactions are the commonest processes which result in a medication error.
They included prescribing errors, dispensing errors, medication administration errors, monitoring requirements, counselling requirement, and adverse drug reaction reporting.
Importantly, we found that most ADEs occurred during the self-management and monitoring stages of medication use, rather than being prescribing or dispensing errors.
Ward-level medication preparation and dispensing errors were included, whilst prescribing and pharmacy dispensing errors were not.
Reviews on medication errors [ 2- 10], prescription errors [ 11] or dispensing errors [ 12] are numerous.
At least 58% of these ADEs are preventable, as they result from incomplete drug information received by hospitals, prescribing or dispensing errors, and overuse or underuse of medications [ 4].
For instance, medication ordering errors have little to do with administration and dispensing errors.
Prompts Prescribing errors Dispensing errors Patients' drug administration errors Monitoring errors Side effects Medication education In your opinion, what are the factors that lead to the medication errors mentioned above?
A cross-sectional study of a sample of 256 residents in 55 UK care homes found that 69.5% had been exposed to one or more medication errors [ 12]; these included mistakes made by GPs in prescribing, dispensing errors by pharmacies, and administration errors made by care home staff.
Specifically, CPOE systems may reduce the frequency of prescribing and probably dispensing errors, whereas other IT solutions (e.g. barcode assisted medication administration and radio frequency identification technologies) may reduce the occurrence of dispensing and administration errors.
