Assessment of medication errors at Zagazig university hospitals

Medication errors are defined as any preventable event that may lead to any inappropriate medication use and or patient harm, or any mistakes associated with the prescription, transcription, dispensing, and administration phases of drug preparation and distribution regardless this mistake led to adverse event or not Aim of the work: Assessment of medication errors at Zagazig University hospitals through the following objectives: 1- To identify rate and types of medication errors at Zagazig university hospitals. 2- To find out some factors that may be associated with occurrence of errors. 3- To assess the perception of health care providers involved in the medication use process about causes of medication errors. Subjects and methods: An observational descriptive study was carried out at random selected sample of Zagazig University hospital, sample was calculated under two main items. A) Selection of records to assess medication errors. As there are 3 medical and 4 surgical hospitals, a random selection of one medical and two surgical hospitals was performed (1st stage). The sample was calculated by using medication error rate (14%), at 95% CI, with the power of the test 80%, 10% dropout, and total records/ year 39468, the sample was 1774. With putting into consideration the proportional allocation of attendance of internal and surgical hospitals (1.7:1) so the sample was 1117 at internal medicine hospital and 657 at surgical hospital. At each hospital a random selection of units was performed (2nd stage). A cluster of records was evaluated at each visit of the selected units B Selection of health care workers to assess their perception toward medication errors: All the health care workers involved in medication