Community Pharmacy Dispensing Errors: A Comprehensive Systematic Review on Trends and Solutions.

Area of Science:

• Pharmacy Practice
• Patient Safety
• Healthcare Quality Improvement

Background:

• Dispensing errors in pharmacies present significant patient safety risks and increase healthcare costs globally.
• Limited comprehensive studies exist on the prevalence, causes, and effective interventions for medication dispensing errors.

Purpose of the Study:

• To systematically review the current evidence on dispensing error prevalence in outpatient and community pharmacies.
• To identify key risk factors contributing to dispensing errors.
• To evaluate the impact of mitigation strategies on reducing dispensing errors.

Main Methods:

• Systematic literature search following PRISMA guidelines across PubMed, Embase, and CINAHL (Jan 2010 - June 2025).
• Inclusion of 22 studies (13 developing, 9 developed countries) reporting calculable prevalence.
• Data extraction and bias assessment using NHLBI and GRADE tools by two independent reviewers.

Main Results:

• Dispensing error rates varied widely (0.001%-11.53%), higher in community (mean 4.12%) than outpatient pharmacies (1.85%).
• Common errors included wrong dose/strength (58.6%) and look-/sound-alike drug confusion (47.90%).
• Key contributing factors were high workload (55%), staff shortages (22%), and illegible prescriptions (30.70%).

Conclusions:

• Dispensing errors remain a critical issue, particularly in community pharmacies and underserved regions.
• Multimodal strategies integrating technology, standardized workflows, and staff training show potential for error reduction.
• Very low certainty of evidence necessitates further research with consistent methods and robust error reporting systems.