A PROSPECTIVE OBSERVATIONAL STUDY ON EVALUATION OF ERROR PRONE ABBREVIATION USED IN MEDICAL CARDS/PRESCRIPTIONS OF A TERTIARY CARE HOSPITAL, EAST INDIA

Swagata Smaran Jana*, Laboni Maity, Ratna Baidya, Swikriti Samadder, S. K. Todi and Arpan Dutta Roy

ABSTRACT

Background- Equivocal medical notations are one of the most common causes of medication errors. Clinicians often use many abbreviations as a time-saving convenience but frequently use of this abbreviations in prescription, misinterpreted and may cause adverse events. Aim- To evaluate the pattern of use of Error Prone Abbreviations in medical cards/ Prescriptions of a Tertiary Care Hospital, East India. Method and materials- The prospective observational study was carried out in different ICU and Wards of a 220 bedded tertiary care teaching hospital in west Bengal to assess the use of error prone abbreviation used in prescriptions. The study was conducted by reviewing prescription of 398 in-patients during March 2018 to June 2018. Result- A total of 398 patients were studied over a 4 month period. During entire study 1832 „error prone abbreviations‟ were used in 4520 medication ordered (40%). The most common abbreviations used were “OD” instead (20%), SC (1%), “U” instead of “Unit” (0.70%), “IU” instead of “International Unit” (0.60%) and „Decimal point‟ error(0.40%). Conclusion- The study showed that a total of numbers of 1832 error-prone abbreviations were detected. These error-prone abbreviations can lead to disastrous medication errors and patient can suffer a lot as a consequence.

Keywords: Error-prone abbreviations, Medication error, Misinterpretation.