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National Observational Study of Prescription Dispensing Accuracy and Safety in 50 Pharmacies



Details

  • Personal Author:
  • Description:
    Objectives: To measure dispensing accuracy rates in 50 pharmacies located in 6 cities across the United States and describe the nature and frequency of the errors detected. Design: Cross-sectional descriptive study. Settings: Chain, independent, and health-system pharmacies (located in hospitals or managed care organizations). Participants: Pharmacy staff at randomly selected pharmacies in each city who accepted an invitation to participate. Intervention: Observation by a pharmacist in each pharmacy for 1 day, with a goal of inspecting 100 prescriptions for dispensing errors (defined as any deviation from the prescriber's order). Main Outcome Measure: Dispensing errors on new and refill prescriptions. Results: Data were collected between July 2000 and April 2001. The overall dispensing accuracy rate was 98.3% (77 errors among 4,481 prescriptions; range, 87.2%-100.0%; 95.0% confidence interval, +/- 0.4%). Accuracy rates did not differ significantly by pharmacy type or city. Of the 77 identified errors, 5 (6.5%) were judged to be clinically important. Conclusion: Dispensing errors are a problem on a national level, at a rate of about 4 errors per day in a pharmacy filling 250 prescriptions daily. An estimated 51.5 million errors occur during the filling of 3 billion prescriptions each year. [Description provided by NIOSH]
  • Subjects:
  • Keywords:
  • ISSN:
    1086-5802
  • Document Type:
    Text
  • Funding:
    Grant
  • Genre:
    Journal Article
  • Place as Subject:
  • CIO:
    National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
  • Topic:
    Workplace Safety & Health
  • Location:
    North America
  • Pages in Document:
    191-200
  • Volume:
    43
  • Issue:
    2
  • NIOSHTIC Number:
    nn:20057636
  • Citation:
    J Am Pharm Assoc 2003 Mar-Apr; 43(2):191-200
  • Contact Point Address:
    Elizabeth Allan Flynn, PhD, Center for Pharmacy Operations and Designs, Harrison School of Pharmacy, Auburn University, Auburn, AL 36849-5506
  • Email:
    flynnel@auburn.edu
  • Federal Fiscal Year:
    2003
  • Performing Organization:
    Deep South Center for Occupational Health and Safety, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL
  • Peer Reviewed:
    True
  • Start Date:
    19980701
  • Source Full Name:
    Journal of the American Pharmaceutical Association
  • End Date:
    20040630
  • Collection(s):
  • Main Document Checksum:
    urn:sha-512:ac0cf7bd5998469f9f8d8f5243b6828e5482790c56270f7dee63997681aee835a084170f2b5c84478c87e907b6ddb9a0e7244b9a1048a26178b247f5280de985
  • Download URL:
  • File Type:
    Filetype[PDF - 60.00 KB ]
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