| Preventable medication errors have been found to be one of the most common types of preventable medication errors, affecting over 7 million people and costing approximately 21 million annually in the India alone. Of all the types of preventable medication errors, prescribing error was found to be one of the most common, with prevalence ranging from 1.5 percent to 88.1 percent. Such errors have mostly occurred during the prescribing decision or prescription writing process. Not only will this method likely result in dangerous drug reactions, but it will also likely result in inferior treatment efficacy. The aim of this study was to assess the prevalence and types of prescribing errors identified by pharmacists in an Indian public tertiary care institution. It is critical to remember that a lack of information about the patient's age and weight, particularly in paediatric patients, may result in unintended underdosing or overdosing. Illegible handwriting in prescriptions is also worth mentioning, albeit accounting for only 3.3 percent of all errors. Because poor handwriting is estimated to kill over 7,000 individuals in the India each year, measures should be made to prevent such errors, such as encouraging the use of free, user-friendly web-based prescribing tools. The findings confirm that prescribing mistake was widespread in the hospital, despite the fact that its prevalence was low when compared to that documented in the literature. Aside from that, omission and commission errors were found to be about similar in frequency. Efforts to reduce such errors, including the implementation of a system that encourages proper prescription practices, are thus necessary.ddd |
