The Impact of Educational Intervention Strategies in Reducing Prescribing Errors in a Public Hospital

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of educational interventions in reducing prescribing errors. The study was carried out at Kuala Kangsar Hospital with 136 beds. A prospective study reviewing newly written prescriptions between May 1, 2009 and June 30, 2009 was conducted after a 4-month period of educational interventions which included providing feedback to the doctors, academic detailing, drug bulletins and reminders from the hospital director to evaluate the effectiveness of the improvement plan. The reduction of prescribing errors was measured to identify the effectiveness of the interventions. Chi square was used to evaluate the significance of the effectiveness of the intervention which was considered successful if there was a 95% confidence interval (p<0.05) in the difference before and after the intervention from the total baseline of prescribing errors. The intervention strategies significantly helped to reduce the incomplete prescription information and the underlying cause of prescribing errors. It also increased the error-free prescriptions by 3.5%. However, it did not significantly reduce potential clinical prescribing errors. The educational interventions provided a positive outcome to improve the prescribing errors. On-going interventions are important because educational interventions highly depend on the responsiveness of prescribers and the cumulative effect of the interventions. Most of the prescribing errors were clinical potential prescribing errors and continuous educational interventions may help to reduce these errors.