IMPROVING THE SAFETY OF DRUG THERAPY AT HOSPITAL

Introduction. Drug therapy errors are widely spread in healthcare facilities worldwide and can cause patient harm and lead to increased cost in the facility. The practical introduction of methods for recording medication therapy errors and the elaboration of measures for their prevention are an urgent problem of medical care safety. Objective: to estimate the spread and types of drug therapy errors at a multidisciplinary hospital. Material and methods. The investigation was conducted at the multidisciplinary hospital of the Meditsina Clinic n 2014. A voluntary medical error reporting system was developed and introduced. A pharmacist continuously inspected drug charts. Results. Over a year, there were 95 reports of medical errors; of them the medication therapy errors were 16%. Verification of whether the pharmacist correctly had prescribed drugs revealed errors in 4.4% of the drug charts. The most common errors were in drug dosage, interaction, and administration routes. Conclusion. The introduction of the voluntary medical error reporting system makes it possible to reveal drug therapy errors in time (before the patient suffers). A pharmacist’s verification of medication charts is an effective method for identifying and correcting the errors made when writing a prescription.