Do junior doctors make more prescribing errors than experienced doctors when prescribing electronically using a...

Area of Science:

• Medical Informatics
• Patient Safety
• Clinical Pharmacy

Background:

• Prescribing errors pose significant risks, necessitating safe and effective prescribing education.
• Understanding error patterns by experience level is crucial for targeted educational interventions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the influence of doctor experience level on prescribing error frequency and type.
• To analyze prescribing errors within a European academic teaching hospital utilizing a computerised physician order entry (CPOE) system with a clinical decision support system (CDSS).

Main Methods:

• Prescriptions from all inpatients in June 2021 were collected.
• Prescriptions triggering CDSS alerts, unresolvable by pharmacy technicians, were reviewed for errors.
• Errors were categorized by type and severity.

Main Results:

• Out of 130,538 prescriptions, 430 prescribing errors (0.3%) were identified.
• Doctors in specialty training and those not in training made significantly more errors than consultants (0.5% vs 0.1%, p<0.001).
• Specialty trainees made more drug-drug interaction errors than consultants.

Conclusions:

• Less experienced doctors commit more prescribing errors than consultants, despite CPOE and CDSS implementation.
• Prescribing error types vary by experience level.
• Findings support tailored educational programs for medical students and doctors in training to enhance prescribing safety.