Comparison of Prescribing Errors in Different Wards of Tertiary Care Hospital before and after Implementation of CPOE System

Background: Medication prescribing errors were always known as inevitable errors in health care system which mainly includes physician’s writing error which then leads to wrong dispensing error. Manual Prescribing has now shifted to CPOE System that seems to be more efficient. Through this system, it is believed that quality and patient security is improved by lessening medicine and different mistakes at various phases of the request the board procedure and by maintaining a strategic reserve from repetitive testing. This Study was conducted to compare the prescribing errors in different hospital wards of a tertiary care hospital for in-patients by using two approaches; Manual Prescribing and CPOE System Prescribing.

Methods: This cross sectional study was conducted on manual prescriptions for three months and on CPOE prescriptions for three months. In this way a total of 4102 prescriptions were evaluated for different types of prescribing errors occurred in different wards. Whole study was conducted on In-patients from all the wards in the hospital except Emergency and OPD patients.

Results and Discussion: The results showed that the maximum number of manual prescription errors were found in Medical ICU ward, while prescribing errors for CPOE setup were found comparatively at higher rate in Medicinal ward. It was also found that maximum frequency of prescribing errors were found in Lower Respiratory Tract Infections in both the settings; CPOE System and Manual Prescribing

Conclusion: It was concluded that CPOE system is helpful for reducing prescribing errors but it must be supervised by pharmacists to overcome potential errors.