Patients’ Medication Errors: How Patients’ Inadequate Information about their Prosthetic Heart Valve Diseases Affects their Healthcare

Abstract

Patients’ awareness and informed involvement may reduce the prevalence of patients’ errors. The aim of this study is to identify the occurrence of patients’ medication errors in one of the leading tertiary care educational superspeciality hospitals in Iran during one year from October 2010 to October 2011. This is a retrospective study. Patients’ medical records were investigated to identify the reported errors in taking medication. A total of 140 medical records of patients who were hospitalized in Madani Heart Hospital of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences were investigated. Then the errors were categorized into three groups including: Reporting, Recklessness/ adherence, and Preference. Descriptive analysis was used to analyze data. Out of total 140 patients’ records, 16 (11%) patient medication errors were identified. Most of these errors were related to communication and reporting followed by non-adherence to the medication prescriptions. The least errors were related to patients’ preference. The study suggests that these errors could have been prevented by involving patients in decision making and self-care through information prescription.