Prescribing Errors Reduced for Patients With Diabetes Following Pharmacist Intervention

A new study found that clinical pharmacist interventions can reduce prescribing errors among patients with diabetes. According to the findings, errors were reduced by 89.5%.  

“While clinical pharmacists are expected to have a potential role in minimizing prescribing errors in patients with diabetes, the effectiveness of their interventions on the incidence and clinical significance of [prescribing errors] remains unclear,” explained the study authors.  

To understand the effectiveness of clinical pharmacist interventions in correcting errors among patients with diabetes as well as major polypharmacy, a prospective pre-post study was conducted. The study included two phases, including the control phase that identified and categorized prescribing errors, and the active phase where clinical pharmacists corrected the errors. 

An expert panel comprised of a senior clinical pharmacist, an internist, and cardiologist evaluated the clinical severity of prescribing incidents. Based on the study criteria, 928 patients were identified. Of these patients, 432 were included in the control phase, and 496 were included in the active phase.   

According the findings, interventions helped reduce prescribing errors by 89.5%, going from 27.6% in the control phase to 2.9% in the active phase. Additionally, prescribing errors per patient and per medication order were reduced from 2.1 to 0.2 and from 0.3 to 0.03, respectively.  

In the active phase, the researchers found that electronic selection errors, wrong dose frequency, duplicate drugs, and allergy errors disappeared. Furthermore, significant, serious, and lethal errors reduced from 35.4%, 11.6%, and 0.2% (control) to 13.5%, 3.1%, and 0.0% (active), respectively.

“Clinical pharmacist interventions significantly reduced [prescribing errors] in patients with diabetes by 89.5% and most of these interventions were clinically significant,” concluded the study authors.  

Reference:

Abu-Naser D. Impact of clinical pharmacist interventions in prescribing errors in hospitalized diabetic patients with major polypharmacy. Hosp Pharm. 2021;56(4):392-399. doi:10.1177/0018578720985428