Role of Clinical Pharmacists in Early Detection, Reporting and Prevention of Medication Errors in a Medical Ward

Abstract

Background: Drug utilization evaluation (DUE) is an effective process in order to identifying variability in drug use and subsequent application of effective interventions for improving patient outcomes. In this study, appropriate uses of drugs were evaluated by pharmacy service. Methods: A prospective, interventional study was designed for determining frequency and type of clinical pharmacists’ interventions and medication errors occurred in the infectious disease ward of Loghman hospital, affiliated to Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran during 8 months. Results: During the 8 months of the study period, 498 errors were detected among 419 patients that admitted to infectious disease ward of Loghman hospital. Most common errors were related to DVT prophylaxis, SUP and vancomycin monitoring. Discussion: Our result showed that clinical pharmacy interventions can have an important role in reducing adverse drug events and their activities can be effective for reducing of medication error.

Keywords

• clinical pharmacists
• role
• prevention
• medical error