Methods to reduce prescription errors in ophthalmic medication.

Purpose: The purpose of this audit was to determine the most common medication related prescription errors in ophthalmic practice, to determine avoidable prescription errors and evaluate the effect of preventative methods against these errors.

Methods: The first audit was conducted prospectively over a four week period in Oct 2009 and a re-audit after 6 months on May 2010, to determine the effects of preventative measures suggested in the first audit.

Results: There were 4.7% (29/623) prescription errors during the initial four week audit period. A method of check and counter check of prescriptions was implemented and re-audit showed a reduction in incidence of errors to 0.77% (5/651) errors.

Conclusions: The majority of prescribing errors occurred at the stage of writing the prescription and our findings suggest that the intervention of check and counter check can reduce the rate of error significantly.