Songklanagarind Hospital has operated an in-patient computerized prescribing system since April 2004, and currently this prescribing system is used instead of handwritten prescription in all wards in the hospital. The objective of this study was to compare the rate of medication errors of both systems. Medication errors were devided into three types: prescribing error, pre-dispensing error and pre-administration error. All in-patient prescriptions from the periods 1 April 2003 - 31 January 2004 and 1 April 2004 - 31 January 2005 were collected, and medication errors from both systems were compared and analyzed by using percentage.
The results showed that prescribing error resulting from the handwritten prescribing system produced errors at a rate of 0.16%, compared to the computerized prescribing system (0.14%). Pre-dispensing error (filling/labeling error) of the handwritten prescribing system produced errors at a rate of 0.35%, which was higher than computerized prescribing system at 0.29%, and pre-administration error (dispensing error) of the handwritten prescribing system produced errors at a rate of 0.04%, again higher than computerized prescribing system at 0.02%.
This study indicates that changing to a computerized prescribing system can reduce patient medication errors, especially dispensing error from pharmacist and thus increases the safety of hospital medication.