medication error following intraocular surgery at a tertiary eye care center

purpose: to evaluate the incidence of medication error in patients who underwent intraocular surgery based on different methods of drug instruction (hand-written versus orally explained) at labbafinejad medical center. methods: during a 6-month period, we evaluated 204 postoperative patients who underwent cataract or glaucoma surgery. patients were randomly assigned to two groups; in group i, patients and their attendants received oral and written instruction in addition to the prescription, while the patients and their attendants in group ii only received oral instruction besides the prescription. one to 3 days after the operation, the overall incidence of medication errors was determined and compared between the groups using fisher’s exact test. results: overall 204 patients including 114 (55.9%) male and 90 (44.1%) female subjects were studied. mean age of the patients and their attendants was 53.5+22.1 (range 1-90) years and 39.1+12.2 (range 19-79) years, respectively. actual medication errors occurred in 7 patients including 3 (3%) in the group with written instruction and 4 (3.9%) in the group with oral instruction (p=0.511). dispensing errors were the cause in 5 (71.4%) patients including 3 in group i and 2 in group ii (p=0.491) but the 2 (28.6%) other cases were due to misconsumption (all in group ii). overall, 3 medication errors were detected and corrected (intercepted errors) by the patients or their attendants (all in group i) thus; non-intercepted errors were 4 (all in group ii). cases of actual medication errors were female in 6 (85.7%) and illiterates in 4 (57.1%). conclusions: it seems that using a written instruction in addition to the prescription may reduce the incidence of medication errors following ocular surgery.