Abstract

ORTHOGRAPHIC AND PHONETIC SIMILARITIES AMONG MARKETED PRODUCTS IN COMMUNITY PHARMACIES OVER KERALA

Nazeem Abdulla* and Manju C. S.

ABSTRACT

Medication safety is recognised as high priority in many health care systems because one simple error can lead to serious health problems. In studies looking all types of medication errors, prescribing errors accounts the highest percentage. The most common dispensing errors found in community and hospital pharmacies are dispensing wrong drug, strength, dosage form or quantity, and labelling medications with incorrect directions. Up to 25% of medication errors in the USA are reported to involve drug name confusion and up to 33% are attributed to packaging or labelling confusion. Both orthographic (spelling) and phonological (sound) similarity increases the probability of name recognition errors among experts and novices. This study results will be useful as source of information for further study in the area of confusion caused by similar drug names and to develop preventive measures. Healthcare organisations need to institute risk management strategies to minimize adverse events with LASA medications and enhance patient safety. To aid in this effort, we hope that errors relating to LASA medications can be minimised through identification and implementation of safety precautions.

Keywords: Orthographic, Phonetic, Dispensing errors, Illegible handwriting, Guidelines, Medication safety.