Abdul Majeed1,
Iltaf Hussain1,
Muqarrab Akbar2,
Muhammad O Chaudhry3,
Imran Imran4,
Hamid Saeed5,
Furqan K Hashmi5,
Omama Siddique1,
Shehnoor Tahir1,
Sana Bilal1,
Fazila Ashraf1,
Mehvish Ayaz1,
Muhammad F Rasool1 
For correspondence:- Muhammad Rasool Email: fawadrasool@bzu.edu.pk
Accepted: 15 December 2020 Published: 31 January 2021
Citation: Majeed A, Hussain I, Akbar M, Chaudhry MO, Imran I, Saeed H, et al. Assessment of medication prescription errors and their contributory factors in major cities of Punjab Province, Pakistan: A cross-sectional survey. Trop J Pharm Res 2021; 20(1):187-201 doi: 10.4314/tjpr.v20i1.28
© 2021 The authors.
This is an Open Access article that uses a funding model which does not charge readers or their institutions for access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) and the Budapest Open Access Initiative (http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read), which permit unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited..
Purpose: To evaluate the prescription errors and their contributory factors in Punjab, Pakistan.
Methods: An observational, cross-sectional study was conducted in 12 major cities of Punjab, Pakistan. A total of 1,184 prescriptions were collected from patients using a convenient sampling method from homes, pharmacies, clinics, and hospitals. The data were presented in frequency and percentage using descriptive statistics. To determine the association between the variables assessed, Chi-square (?2) test was used.
Results: A total of 1,184 prescriptions were analyzed; 432 of them (36.5 %) were from prescribers who are graduate degree holders, and 752 (63.5 %) from prescribers who are post-graduate degree holders. The most commonly missing parameters in the prescriptions were the age of the patients (835 representing 29.4 %), signatures of the prescribers (755 representing 26.5 %), and prefix (622 representing 21.9 %). The number of prescription errors was significantly correlated to prescriber qualification (p = 0.001). The prescription errors were more common in age groups of prescribers: 21 - 30 years (654 representing 23.0 %), and 31 - 40 years (1,012 representing 35.6 %) (p = 0.001). The higher number of prescription errors by post-graduate prescribers working in teaching hospitals can be attributed to the higher patient load and lack of continuing medical education programs for the prescribers.
Conclusion: The government should take necessary measures for the implementation of electronic prescribing systems, and devise mechanisms for the uniform distribution of patient load amongst the prescribers working in different hospitals.
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