High incidence of medication documentation errors in a Swiss university hospital due to the handwritten prescription process

Table 1 Listing of Medication Documentation Errors (n = 105), (Derived from previous work by Kenneth Barker et al 2002 [8])

Type of Error	Absolute Frequency	%
Prescribing Errors	39	37.1
Wrong/missing date/time	29	27.6
Missing dose specification	4	3.8
Ambiguous order/Overdose	3	2.9
Wrong patient	2	1.9
Missing frequency specification	1	1.0
Transcription Errors	56	53.3
Missing New Orders	28	26.7
Wrongly Transcribed Dose	18	17.1
Not Transcribed Stop Order	1	1.0
Others	9	8.6
Administration documentation errors	10	9.5
Omission or missing administration documentation	4	3.8
Wrong/missing date/time	2	1.9
Intentional alteration of original drug name	1	1.0
Inaccurate dosing documentation	1	1.0
Documentation on wrong patient sheet	1	1.0
Wrong categorization on sheet	1	1.0
Total Errors	105	100.0

Listing of Medication Documentation Errors (n = 105), (Derived from previous work by Kenneth Barker et al 2002 [8])

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