Patient Counselling A Study on Prescribing and Dispensing Practice in a South Indian Corporate Hospital.

Medication errors are one of the leading causes of mortality and morbidity in many countries can occur in any step of medication use process that is, prescribing, administration and dispensing error. The main aim of this study was to evaluate the prescribing and dispensing practice in a corporate hospital in south India. This prospective observational study conducted in outpatients those who participate in patient counselling. Among 328 cases 261 cases were medication errors and it is found that, out of 261 cases (67.81%) were prescribing errors and (70.49%) dispensing errors. The most type of prescribing error was incomplete prescription (66.10%) and illegible handwriting (20.33%). Dispensing error mainly caused by incorrect labelling (85.32%). Thus it was concluded that a clinical pharmacist can play a major role in this situation appears to be a strong intervention and early detection and prevention of medication errors and thus can improve the quality of care to the patients. Educating the patients about the drug and their importance of right use, literacy can be helpful in minimizing errors