MEDICAL PRESCRIPTION ANALYSIS IN A THIRD-LEVEL HOSPITAL

Objective: To describe and quantify the main potential sources of error in medical prescriptions, and propose measures for their prevention. Method: Cross-sectional descriptive study of all medical prescriptions received in a day in a general university hospital. We coded the study variables and included them in the SPSS 13 statistical software program. We analyzed which ones were the main potential sources of error that reduced the quality of medical prescription. Results: The main potential source of error was the use of abbreviations in 90.4% of cases, being the most used: mg., amp., sc., kcl. 88.6% of prescriptions were considered as incomplete and 36.8% as unreadable. Drugs with similar brand names were prescribed in 68.9% of cases. Conclusions: After analyzing the obtained results, a series of corrective and formative measures were proposed with the purpose of providing a higher quality in our hospital's medical prescriptions.