Pharmacist-led educational and error notification interventions on prescribing errors in family medicine clinic

To determine the rate of prescribing errors in a family medicine clinic and the subsequent impact of pharmacist-led educational and error notification interventions on prescribing errors.

Single site, pre-post study design.

An outpatient academic family medicine clinic serving pediatric and adult populations in Oklahoma from March 1, 2011, through April 30, 2012.

24 resident physicians who prescribed medications during routine outpatient visits.

A prescribing educational program, audit and feedback methods, and weekly newsletter.

Percentage of prescription errors and physician error rate before and after intervention among pediatric and adult populations.

During the two assessment periods, 24 resident physicians wrote 2,753 prescriptions for 394 pediatric and 899 adult patients. The overall percentage of prescription errors decreased from 18.6% during March 2011 to 14.5% during April 2012 (P = 0.004). Errors were more commonly seen with prescriptions written for pediatric patients (24.9%) than for adult patients (13.9%) (P = 0.001). Individual physician error rates ranged from 5% to 36% (mean ± SD 16.5% ± 8.1). Physicians committed significantly fewer prescribing errors during the postintervention assessment period (14.9%) than during the preintervention assessment period (20.9%) (P = 0.002). Controlling for time, pediatric prescription error rates among physicians who participated in the educational intervention were 36% lower than the error rates among physicians who did not participate (rate ratio 0.64 [95% CI 0.45, 0.91], P = 0.01).

The pharmacist-led educational program was effective in reducing pediatric prescribing errors among resident physicians in a family medicine clinic.