[Prescribing and dispensing drugs in Denmark. Frequency of and intervention against errors in documentation and dispensing of drugs].

Foreign studies mainly describe errors in medicine prescriptions in context with adverse drug events unlike most Danish studies and projects, which focus on documentation. Current methods of prescribing medicines in Denmark only partially follow the guidelines given by the National Board of Health. About two thirds of the prescriptions are unambiguous. Errors of potential clinical significance are estimated to occur in 4.5% of prescriptions. Transcription errors occur mainly from patients' records to the medication forms and are found in 23% to 83% of transcribed prescriptions. Several departments have intervened by using only one prescription form, a paper or electronic version, which reduced the number of ambiguous prescriptions and eliminated transcription errors. Dispensing errors are common and demonstrate the importance of further quality improvement.