Student observations of medication error reporting practices in community pharmacy settings

Area of Science:

• Pharmacy Practice
• Patient Safety
• Medication Errors

Background:

• Medication safety practices and error reporting methods in community pharmacies are not well-documented.
• Existing literature lacks comprehensive data on these practices in community pharmacy settings.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe student-reported data on medication safety and error reporting practices in community pharmacies.
• To assess student learning regarding medication safety and error reporting through an experiential assignment.

Main Methods:

• Second-year pharmacy students observed and recorded medication safety and error reporting practices in 170 unique community pharmacy settings (2016-2018).
• Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and a paired t-test to evaluate student learning outcomes.

Main Results:

• 51% of students documented 1-10 errors/near misses annually; 30% reported 11-30. Near misses were reported only 26% of the time.
• Common errors included wrong directions (34%), wrong drug (14%), wrong strength (13%), and wrong patient (12%). Pharmacists were interrupted ~19 times/hour.
• Anonymous error reporting was unavailable in 71% of systems. Contacting prescribers about errors was policy at 77% of sites.

Conclusions:

• Student understanding of medication safety and error reporting significantly increased (p < 0.01).
• Findings supplement existing literature and identify knowledge gaps in community pharmacy medication safety and error reporting.