Abstract:
The objectives of this study were to develop an interactive dispensing model for high risk drugs and to evaluate its effectiveness at outpatient clinic. The study was done at Lerdsin hospital between September 2005 and March 2006. The interactive dispensing model was equipped with 5 prime questions, aiming to assure patient's safety within a limited time frame during dispensing process. Evaluation was done in 3 aspects, 1). The average dispensing time. 2) Rates and types of medication errors. 3) Rates and types of adverse drug reactions. There were 127 individuals at outpatient clinics participating in this study. Each received at least one high risk drug. The average dispensing time was 5.65±3.2 minutes per patient and 63.8% of the patients' dispensing time were more than 3 minutes. The average dispensing time of all medications including high risk drugs was 9.42±3.92 minutes per patient. Sixty-one of 147 patients (41.49 %) who received high risk drugs had adverse drug reaction, in which 95.08% of them were probable preventable. There were 80 medication errors (4.82%) found with 77 (4.63%) categorized as prescribing errors. Most of them were potential drug-drug interactions (73, 4.39%). dispensing errors (3, 0.18%). This interactive dispensing model may not be practical at a very busy pharmacy department due to extra time consuming. Nevertheless, it was found that this interactive model could excellently detect, correct prevent errors and adverse drug reactions, in particular high risk drugs. With modification according to the work load and number of prescriptions, this could be useful in minimizing hazards due to the use of high risk drugs in outpatients.