Medications errors in primary care in Bahrain
What is it about?
One of the important activities that physicians – particularly general practitioners perform is prescribing. It occurs in most health care facilities and especially in primary health care (PHC) settings. This study aims to determine what types of prescribing errors are made in primary care at Bahrain BDF hospital ,and how common they are.
Why is it important?
Our study showed Of the total prescriptions, 54.4% were given to male patients and 45.6% to female patients; 24.8% were given to patients under the age of 10 years. On average, there were 2.6 drugs per prescription. In the prescriptions, 8.7% of drugs were prescribed by their generic names, and 28% of prescriptions included an antibiotic. Out of the 379 prescriptions, 228 had an error, and 44.3% of the 992 prescribed drugs contained errors. The proportions of errors were as follows: 9.9% were minor omission errors;73.6% were major omission errors; 9.3% were commission errors; and 17.1% were skill-related errors.