THE ROLES OF CLINICAL PHARMACY IN REDUCING MEDICATION ERRORS

Abstract

Potential activation of clinical pharmacist role is of great importance in reducing the medication errors which are a well- known problem in hospital. The medication errors could be prescribing errors, dispensing errors, and administering errors. In this study medication errors randomly were collected by clinical pharmacist and inpatient pharmacist from different wards at a Hospital in Dubai, UAE, from July to October 2011. The results showed that the highest percentage of medication errors was prescribing errors, followed by administering errors and then dispensing errors. Among prescribing errors, the results showed the highest percentage was stat errors, followed by pro re nata(PRN), then incomplete or unclear Rx and at the end antibiotic errors. The study shows that the clinical pharmacist play important role in reduction of medication errors evolving from pharmacist and nursing site, on the other hand, prescribing errors were reduced up to 23% with the medication review system.