Table 7.
Analysis of prescribing errors before (epoch 1) and after (epoch 3) phase two of Safer Patients Initiative (SPI2)*
| Control hospitals | SPI2 hospitals | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Epoch 1 | Epoch 2 | Epoch 3† | Epoch 1 | Epoch 2 | Epoch 3† | ||
| No of patients‡ | 120 | 122 | 112 | 113 | 117 | 114 | |
| No of prescriptions | 2953 | 3269 | 2871 | 2529 | 2938 | 2656 | |
| Prescriptions per patient | 24.6 | 26.8 | 25.6 | 22.4 | 25.1 | 23.3 | |
| No of errors | 345 | 298 | 216 | 251 | 266 | 167 | |
| Error rate (SE) per prescription | 0.12 (0.02) | 0.09 (0.01) | 0.08 (0.01) | 0.101(0.02) | 0.09 (0.01) | 0.06 (0.01) | |
*Breakdown of error types, including failure to reconcile patient’s previous medicines with prescription on admission (particular focus of SPI), available in full report (www.haps.bham.ac.uk/publichealth/psrp/EvalSPI.shtml).2
†After intervention.
‡With medication charts available for review.