NEAR MISS PRESCRIPTION ERRORS AND REPORTING - AN INSIGHT INTO A NEW TERTIARY UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL

Prescription errors account for most medication-related harm, estimated to affect 1–2% of hospitalized patients in the US. The primary goal of collecting information about medication

errors is to establish a database that documents all errors related to medication usage. Prescribing errors, a subset of medication errors, significantly threaten hospital patient safety. It

includes error-prone abbreviations, calculation errors, inappropriate dosage, wrong route, wrong frequency, wrong medication name, and software problems.

A near miss is a medication error that can potentially cause an adverse event but does not reach the patient because of chance or intervention in the medication process. Identifying and

reporting near misses is routinely practiced by pharmacists as a safeguard mechanism to limit medication errors. The number of prescribing interventions performed by pharmacists

reflects near miss in prescribing error that does not reach the patient.

Hospital Al-Sultan Abdullah is a tertiary care facility that opened its doors in April 2021 with 400 gazetted beds. It became fully operational in January 2022 and has experienced a steady

increase in annual attendance, corresponding with the number of prescriptions issued. In 2022, 156 beds were operational, with a Bed Occupancy Rate (BOR) of 64.3%. In 2023, the

operational beds increased to 201, with a BOR of 77.6%. This report describes the near-miss reporting for prescription errors in our newly operating hospital.