ArticlePloS one2019
Prescribing errors by junior doctors- A comparison of errors with high risk medicines and non-high risk medicines.
Article in PloS one, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- Contributions of Specialized Nurses to Medication Management for Older People in Home Care: A Mixed-Method Systematic Review.Risk management and healthcare policy · 2025Review
- Simulated virtual on-call training programme for improving non-specialised junior doctors' confidence in out-of-hours psychiatry: quantitative assessment.BJPsych bulletin · 2023Article
- Prescribing errors in a Brazilian teaching hospital: Causes and underlying factors from the perspective of junior doctors.PloS one · 2023Article
- Antimicrobial Prescribing in the Emergency Department; Who Is Calling the Shots?Antibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- Associations of physicians' prescribing experience, work hours, and workload with prescription errors.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA · 2021Article
- Medication errors and drug knowledge gaps among critical-care nurses: a mixed multi-method study.BMC health services research · 2019Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
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Abstract
introductionPrescribing errors in hospital are common. However, errors with high-risk-medicines (HRMs) have a greater propensity to cause harm compared to non-HRMs. We do not know if there are differences between the causes of errors with HRMs and non-HRMs but such knowledge might be useful in developing interventions to reduce errors and avoidable harm. Therefore, this study aims to compare and contrast junior doctors' prescribing errors with HRMs to non-HRMs to establish any differences.
methodsA secondary analysis of fifty-nine interviews with foundation year doctors, obtained from three studies, was conducted. Using a Framework Analysis approach, through NVivo software, a detailed comparison was conducted between the unsafe acts, error-causing-conditions (ECCs), latent conditions, and types of errors related to prescribing errors with HRMs and non-HRMs.
resultsIn relation to unsafe acts, violations were described in the data with non-HRMs only. Differences in ECCs of HRMs and non-HRMs were identified and related to the complexity of prescribing HRMs, especially dosage calculations. There were also differences in the circumstances of communication failures: with HRMs ineffective communication arose with exchanges with individuals outside the immediate medical team while with non-HRMs these failures occurred with exchanges within that team. Differences were identified with the latent conditions: with non-HRMs there was a reluctance to seek seniors help and with HRMs latent conditions related to the organisational system such as the inclusion of trade names in hospital formularies. Moreover, prescribing during the on-call period was particularly challenging especially with HRMs.
conclusionFrom this secondary analysis, differences in the nature and type of prescribing errors with HRMs and non-HRMs were identified, although further research is needed to investigate their prevalence. As errors with HRMs have the potential to cause great harm it may be appropriate to target limited resources towards interventions that tackle the underlying causes of such errors. Equally concerning, however, was the sense that doctors regard the prescribing of non-HRMs as 'safe'.
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