Prescribing Errors in Prescription Orders Containing Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs: A Case Study of District Khairpur, Sindh, Pakistan.

A prescription error is a failure in the prescription writing process which results in a wrong instruction about one or more of the normal features of a prescription. The objective of this study was to identify the extent of prescribing errors in prescriptions containing Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) and to find appropriate solutions for reducing these errors because NSAIDs are one of the widely misused drugs. A total of 479 prescriptions containing NSAIDs were collected from various out-patient clinical settings of district Khairpur Pakistan and analyzed retrospectively to identify the common prescribing errors, i.e. omission errors and commission errors as per prescription writing guidelines/parameters established by the World Health Organization and authenticated drug references, such as, The Drug information book and the British National Formulary (BNF). Only 21 (4.4%) prescriptions were found error free and the remaining 458 (95.6%) prescriptions contained different types of errors. Errors were divided into omission and commission errors. Among omission errors, most of the prescriptions were missing key information related to the patient, such as patient diagnosis, which was not written in 84% of prescriptions. Among information pertaining to the prescriber, the registration number was missing in 88.9% of prescriptions. Among drug related information, duration of therapy was not written in 82.8% of prescriptions. Among commission errors, 85.2% of prescriptions were ambiguously written. A significant percentage of omission and commission were found in routine practice. It is strongly recommended that computerized physician order entry (CPOE) and continuous educational training programs for prescribers to be implemented in order to reduce vital prescribing errors and prescriptions should be reviewed by pharmacists in order to reduce the extent of these serious and fatal errors.