MEDICATION ERRORS IN OUTPATIENTS OF A GOVERNMENT HOSPITAL IN YOGYAKARTA INDONESIA

Background. Medication errors are important problems in hospitalized patients. Medication errors are inevitable and are affected by human factors. Nevertheless, the epidemiological data about medication errors in outpatients in Indonesia is still limited. Objectives. This study was purposed to know the occurrence of medication errors including prescribing error, pharmaceutical error and dispensing error and the occurrence of the most type happened in these errors. Methods. A prospective study with outpatients of a government hospital in Yogyakarta, Indonesia as study subjects. The study was carried out from June to September 2007 start at 9 am-12 am. Results. We observed the prescription of 229 outpatients. We found 226 prescriptions with medication errors. Of the 226 medication errors, 99.12% were prescribing errors, 3.02% were pharmaceutical errors and 3.66% were dispensing errors. The most type of prescribing error was incomplete prescription orders. Physician ordering was the most common stage of errors (99.12%). The pharmaceutical errors were including over dose and under dose of drugs. The dispensing errors were including improper drug preparation and incomplete or no drug information. Conclusion. Medication errors are still common problem in outpatients in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Pharmacists needed to prevent and to overcome the medication errors