The Pharmacists' Responses and the Collaboration Between Pharmacists and Prescribers Towards Hospital Medication Errors, Saudi Study

Abstract

Background: medication errors result with many morbidities and mortalities that cost the country billions of dollars. Aim: this study aims to assess hospital pharmacists' responses towards medication errors and to determine the collaboration between healthcare providers in solving problems related to medication errors in major hospitals of the Western Region, Saudi Arabia. Methods: a cross sections study was adopted in this research. A total of 270 questionnaires were randomly distributed to hospital pharmacists through face to face interviews in 8 major hospitals in the Western Region in Saudi Arabia. Data was analyzed using IBM SPSS, version 22, Armonk, NY: IBM Corp. Associations between variables were tested by Chi-square and Fisher's exact tests. The level P ≤ 0.05 was considered as a cut-off point for significance. Results: A total of 190 pharmacists successfully completed the questionnaire from targeted hospitals. Only less than 40% of respondents check patients’ medications history and any potential allergy and drug-drug interactions. About 50% of pharmacists correct medication errors without referring to physician. Whereas, about one-quarter of physicians always accept pharmacists’ suggestions and write new prescriptions based on pharmacist recommendations. Forty nine percent of pharmacists perceived physicians inaccessible persons and about 70% of them feel frustrating when they call physicians without getting any response from them. Conclusion: pharmacists and physicians roles should be perceived as complementary role rather than competitive role. More collaboration need to be enforced the two professions through shared activities, events and workshops to reduce the gap of misunderstanding of their complementary role.