Good, Bad And The Ugly; Dispensing Accuracy Of The Pharmacists Based On The Good, Legible And Illegible Handwriting Prescription Patterns Of Physicians.
Journal Title: IOSR Journal of Dental and Medical Sciences (IOSR-JDMS) - Year 2019, Vol 18, Issue 4
Abstract
Introduction: It’s no secret that many doctors have poor handwriting. While we sometimes joke about the difficulty in reading doctors’ scrawl, it’s no laughing matter. In fact, it can lead to deadly mistakes. In 1999, one example quickly made the headlines. A cardiologist (heart doctor) had given a middle-aged man a handwritten prescription for 20 mg of Isordil (isosorbide) to be taken every 6 hours. The man needed this medicine to prevent episodes of heart pain that could lead to a heart attack. However, the doctor’s handwriting was hard to read (see photo), and the purpose of the medicine was not on the prescription. A pharmacist misread Isordil as Plendil (felodipine), a medicine used to treat high blood pressure. The man suffered a heart attack after taking high doses of Plendil every 6 hours for 1 day, and not taking Isordil as prescribed. He died a few days later.We therefore decided to examine the prescription patterns of the health care providers and the dispensing accuracy of the pharmacists. .Aim: To study the dispensing accuracy depending on handwriting patterns of the prescribing physicians. Methods: After obtaining approval from the IEC and valid informed consent, the participants were recruited into the study. Prospective, single blind, observational study of accuracy of the dispensers based on three hand writing patterns the good, bad and the ugly prescriptions. Results: Good handwriting prescriptions are dispensed with 96% accuracy. Bad handwriting prescriptions are dispensed with 8% accuracy. 54% of the bad handwriting group are given a totally unrelated compound. 38% of the bad handwriting group said that they don’t know the drug. Ugly handwriting prescriptions are dispensed with 0% accuracy. 30% of the ugly handwriting group are given a totally unrelated compound and 70% said that they don’t know the drug. Conclusion:.Bad and ugly handwriting practices resulted in dispensing errors which will result in adverse outcomes to the patients sometimes leading to death. Hence electronic prescriptions are encouraged wherever feasible and physicians, pharmacists and patients should be educated on how to reduce such errors.
Authors and Affiliations
Dr. N. Suresh Babu, Dr. N. P. Sireesha, Dr. CH Santhi Lakshmi, Dr. S. Vinutha
Keywords
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- EP ID EP574167
- DOI 10.9790/0853-1804114951.
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