Table 3.
Numbers (percentage) of preventable drug-related admissions associated with prescribing problems, monitoring problems and patient adherence problems
| Number (%) of admissions attributed to different underlying causes | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Underlying cause | Bigby 1987 [19] (n = 36) | Courtman 1995 [23] (n = 18) | Dartnell 1996 [22] (n = 36) | Hallas 1992 [12] (n = 67) | Howard 2003 [15] (n = 178) | Median % (range) for all studies |
| Prescribing problem | 4 (11) | 5 (28) | 11 (30) | 28 (42) | 63 (35) | 30.6 (11.1–41.8) |
| Monitoring problem | 12 (33) | 7 (39) | 15 (42) | 14 (21) | 53 (30) | 22.2 (0–31.3) |
| Patient adherence problem | 6 (17) | 8 (22) | 21 (31) | 46 (26) | 33.3 (20.9–41.7) | |
| Unclassified | 14 (39) | 6 (33) | 2 (6) | 4 (6) | 16 (9) | |
| Total | 36 (100) | 18 (100) | 36 (100) | 67 (100) | 178 (100) | |