Outpatient CPOE orders discontinued due to 'erroneous entry': prospective survey of prescribers' explanations for errors.

Background: Computerised prescriber order entry (CPOE) systems users often discontinue medications because the initial order was erroneous.

Objective: To elucidate error types by querying prescribers about their reasons for discontinuing outpatient medication orders that they had self-identified as erroneous.

Methods: During a nearly 3 year retrospective data collection period, we identified 57 972 drugs discontinued with the reason 'Error (erroneous entry).