Vol. 8, Issue 9 (2019)

Objectives: Objectives of the study are:

. To identify frequency and the most common pharmacological class and medication dosage form that led to MEs in primary healthcare centers since 2017.

. To identify the most common patient, physician and clinical characteristics that led to more frequent MEs in primary healthcare centers since 2017.

Methodology: It was a retrospective descriptive study based on reporting forms of medication errors made by pharmacists in Al-Wazarat pharmacy from January 2017 to December 2017. Data of Medication Errors along with clinic, patient and physician characteristics was retreived and descriptive analysis was made by frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, and cross-tabulation with Chi-Square tests.

Results: The study results showed: Majority of the errors occurred in morning shift with B outcome category, female patients were more affected by MEs in primary healthcare centers, inappropriate dosage, under and over dose, non-formulary, drug not specified and monitoring error were most frequent MEs which occurred most commonly in general clinics and the clinics of chronic disease with oral and parenteral form of dosage. Most of the errors had been made by the male registrar and the majority of them were Saudis.

Recommendations: Keeping in view the results of study, awareness of reporting medication errors through educational or training workshops among physicians is recommended. Moreover. Formulary should be distributed in all clinics and reporting system of ME should also be improved.