The role of the hospital pharmacy in preventing medication errors in Brazilian hospitals

Abstract

In recent years, medication errors have received considerable attention from healthcare professionals, health institutions, and health authorities worldwide. The purpose of this work was to identify preventive strategies to prevent drug-dispensing errors and harms to patients in Brazilian hospitals. An integrative review was conducted on Scientific Electronic Library Online, Google Scholar, Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online Database and Portal of Periodicals of the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education using the following keywords: medication errors, dispensing errors, and hospital pharmacy. 96 papers were first selected and after analysis, those that did not fulfill the inclusion criteria, that is discussion of dispensing errors in a hospital setting or evaluation or suggestions of preventive drug- dispensing actions, were excluded, and only 11 papers were included in this review. Low implementation actions to prevent dispensing medication errors were the most common. In general, hospitals have been adopting safer dispensing systems namely unit-dose drug dispensing system, medication reconciliation, potentially dangerous drugs supervision, development of guidebooks of properly drug storage and medication prepare and dispensing, double checks during dispensing and differentiation similar pronunciation and spelling drugs. All strategies were found to be in accordance with international recommendations to prevent medication and dispensing errors.