Prevalence and characteristics of medication errors at the outpatient settings, Jigme Dorji Wangchuck National Referral Hospital (JDWNRH): Retrospective study.

IntroductionMedication errors (MEs) are common events in the hospital that compromises the patient safety. Despite high prevalence of MEs being reported, there is a limited information at the outpatient settings. MethodThis study assessed the prevalence and characteristics of MEs by analyzing the data of pharmacist-led interventions recorded between 1st November 2024 to 30th September 2025 at the outpatient department of pharmacy, Jigme Dorji Wangchuck National Referral Hospital (JDWNRH). ResultsOf the 90108 prescriptions dispensed, 2045 (2.27%) MEs were recorded during the study period. Among which, 90.81%, 8.70% and 0.49% accounted to prescribing error, packaging error and dispensing error, respectively. More than half of the prescribing error were attributed with antibiotics (39.3%) and antihypertensives (13.9%) combined. Dosing error (63.5%) was highly prevalent type of prescribing error, followed by wrong frequency (12.0%), no indication (10.0%) and omission (5.7%). The severity of harm related to with prescribing error were observed as; no harm (212, 11.42%), minor (233, 12.55%), moderate (1364, 73.45%) and serious (48, 12.58%). Pharmacist-led interventions has prevented more than 90% of the potential harm related to the prescribing error. ConclusionPrescribing error is the most common type of MEs at the outpatient settings in JDWNRH. Majority of the prescribing errors were found to be moderately severe. Pharmacists-led interventions should be effectively integrated in the disease management system to enhance the overall patient safety. Concerned prescribers should enhance their knowledge, particularly in therapeutic management of infectious disease and hypertension to minimize the prescribing errors.