Introduction:

A medication error is any avoidable event that may be related to professional practice, derived from misguided actions, which may affect health and that range from the time of prescription to the fulfillment of the medical order. Prescription errors are relevant, since, if they are not detected in time, they can mean harm or death to the patient.

Objective:

To evaluate outpatient prescriptions in the internal pharmacy of a district hospital between January and April 2017.

Methodology:

Descriptive, retrospective observational study with simple random sampling. Data collection was performed by reviewing prescriptions prescribed to patients who go to the outpatient clinic, taking into account the indicators of the World Health Organization (WHO) for the use of drugs. Data were recorded in an Excel spreadsheet along with the parameters to be evaluated.

Results:

Out of the 3376 prescriptions analyzed, 1199 (35.5%) met all legal requirements, 2507 (74.3%) were written in legible letters, 3117 (92.3%) had the patient's diagnosis, 788 (53%) had specified the dose of the drug to be dispensed and 2672 (79.1%) had clarified the pharmaceutical form.

Conclusion:

Work should focus on detection, prevention and treatment of medication errors through the integration of a multidisciplinary team, standardization of medical prescription and implementation of electronic prescription in order to ease the medication prescription.

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