Prevalence and Characteristics of Prescription Errors in Community Pharmacies in Mbarara City, South Western Uganda

Background: A prescription error is a failure in the prescription writing process that results in a wrong instruction about one or more of the standard features of a prescription. Most adverse drug events are preventable through promoting rational drug use; primarily by mitigating the outstanding high burden of prescribing errors. The main aim of this study is to assess the prevalence and characteristics of prescription errors in the community pharmacies in Mbarara, Uganda. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in selected community pharmacies in Mbarara City, South Western Uganda. Consecutive sampling of all prescriptions availed at the selected pharmacies was conducted until the total sampling target was achieved. A structured checklist adopted from the standard prescription guidelines according to the Uganda Clinical Guidelines was used to abstract data from the prescriptions. Results: The study included 420 prescriptions from eleven community pharmacies in Mbarara City. The overall prevalence of prescription error was 64.3%. Out of 420 prescriptions analysed, 270 prescriptions had a total of 412 prescribing errors. Illegible or wrong drug name was the most prevalent form of prescription error (170, 40.48%) followed by missing or wrong route of administration (113, 26.9%). On the other hand, out of 985 prescription writing errors, 703 (71.4%) were errors of omission. The errors of commission accounted for 282 (28.6%) of the prescription writing errors: 156 (38.4%) had errors in name of the drug, and 58 (14.3%) had errors in prescriber’s name among others. Conclusion: The current prevalence of prescription errors is much higher compared to previously reported findings. This translates to suboptimal patient care and heightened risk of adverse drug events including the risk of antimicrobial resistance. This calls for strengthening health care systems to reduce prescription errors and prevent adverse drug events, including incorrect prescribing, drug interactions, antibiotic resistance, and treatment failure.