OBJECTIVES

: Iatrogenesis is an inevitable reality under the current complex healthcare framework. Medication errors (ME) jeopardizes patient safety. It is important to understand how often and why these errors are occurring and contributing factors. It is essential to reduce their occurrence in the limited resources scenario. Further, safer use of antibiotics will not only reduce the burden of antibiotic resistance, but also limits the patient from unnecessary exposures to the adverse effects.

METHODS

: A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted in inpatients of either gender, aged > RESULTS

: Of the 1162 antibiotic doses prescribed for 500 patients, 36 (7.2%) patients were presented with medication errors. A total of 47 medication errors were detected. The average number of medication error was 1.31 errors/ patient. Administration errors accounted for 21 (44%) MEs. Distractions [23 (48%)] and interruptions [16 (34%)] were the major contributing factors for these errors. A total of 14 individual antibiotics, under 4 different classes were implicated in the errors and Ceftriaxone (28%) was widely implicated. Most [27 (57%)] of the errors belonged to the category C as per the NCC MERP index.

CONCLUSIONS

: The use of antibiotics was found to be high in the Intensive Care Unit. Of the total reported medication errors, Ceftriaxone was most commonly implicated. Clinical pharmacist plays an important role in the detection and management of MEs.