Prescription writing and dangerous abbreviations as advocated. There is an apprehensive need in Pakistan to start today byĬonsciously administering policies of quality assurance towards the use of below standard However, economical way out such as the nonuse of dangerous abbreviations may also help to Reduce prescribing errors in the handwritten medication orders written by the staff, worldwide. Evidence suggests that multifaceted interventions have been designed and conducted to Multifaceted human factorial concerns are identified in theĬulture of safety, existence of medication errors and quality assurance in health care system of To this habit of health care workers occurs frequently resulting significant morbidity and The use of abbreviations is a longĮstablished habit of clinicians’ evidence shows that such habits must begin to change. Newspaper reported that medical negligence is the eighth leading cause of death and that aboutħ,000 deaths per year are only accounted to medication errors. Medical inattention is a common, growing and widely reported problem in Pakistan.

There is a need to educating health care professionals on this issue and introduce an in-house error-prone abbreviation list for their guidance. All pharmacists believed that using error-prone abbreviations will always (5.3%) or sometimes (94.7%) lead to medication errors.Įrror-prone abbreviations and many other unapproved abbreviations are frequently used in hospitals. The abbreviation 'd' was used to denote 'daily' as well as 'days'. Multiple abbreviations were used to indicate a single drug item/ instruction (N = 7). Among the 103 types of abbreviations observed, 71 were not standard acceptable abbreviations. The error-prone abbreviations used in the hospital were, μg (microgram), mcg (microgram), u (units), cc (cubic centimeter), OD (once a day), sign, d (days/daily), m (morning) and n (night), and among all prescriptions reviewed, they were used at a rate of 17.4%, 0.1%, 1.9%, 0.2%, 0.2%, 4.9%, 23.5%, 4.4% and 15.8% respectively.

The mean (standard deviation) number of abbreviations per prescription was 5.9 (3.5). An interviewer administered questionnaire was used to assess attitudes of pharmacists.ģ370 drug items (989 prescriptions) were reviewed. Prescriptions of outpatients and specialty clinic patients in a teaching hospital in Sri Lanka were reviewed during one month. We investigated the use of error-prone and other unapproved abbreviations in prescriptions, and assessed the attitudes of pharmacists on this issue.Ī reference list of error-prone abbreviations was developed. Inappropriate abbreviations used in prescriptions have led to medication errors.

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