Medication Errors among Pharmacists in Hospitals and Health Care Centers Affiliated with the Ministry of Health: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Medication errors (MEs) present a significant issue in health care area, as they pose a threat to patient safety and could occur at any stage of the medication use process. The objective of this systematic review was to review studies reporting the rates, prevalence, and/or incidence of various MEs in different hospitals and health care centers, searched PubMed, HINARI, Google, and SCOPUS for relevant published studies. We included observational, cross sectional or cohort studies on MEs targeting adults in different health care settings, a total of number records were identified through searching different databases. Following the removal of duplicates, screening of title, abstract and full text screening, 24 papers were included for the final review step. Prescribing errors was the most common error reported in the included studies, where it was reported in 15 studies. The prevalence of prescribing errors ranged from 0.1% to 96%. Two studies reported unintentional discrepancies and documentation errors as other types of MEs, where the prevalence of unintentional discrepancies ranged from 47% to 67.9%, and the prevalence of documentation errors ranged from 33.7% to 65%. In conclusion, a wide variation was found between the reviewed studies in the error prevalence rates. This variation may be due to the variation in the clinical settings, targeted populations, methodologies employed. There is an imperative need for addressing the issue of MEs and improving drug therapy practice among Pharmacists or health care professionals by introducing education and training.