Impact of Clinical Pharmacy Services on Medication Errors in A Multispecialty Hospital

摘要

The study was conducted to improve treatment outcome by detecting, categorizing and minimizing medication errors thereby making aware of clinical pharmacy services to other healthcare professionals and patients. A prospective observational study including 203 patients from both Inpatient and Outpatient department was conducted for a period of 6 months. Medication errors were identified and their severities were assessed using NCCMERP index. Prescription error (48.83%) was identified as the most prominent medication error. It was also observed that medication error increases remarkably with increase in age, length of hospital stay and number of medication per prescription. Other commonly occurring errors were due to drug-drug interaction (41.51%), ADR (2.7%), lack of staff education, drug monitoring and improper counselling. Medication error can be minimized by the active participation of clinical pharmacist. Hospital management should be encouraged to develop a protocol for writing medication orders to improve the quality of healthcare services.