Medication Prescribing Errors Involving the Route of Administration

Context: Administration of medications by the wrong route or as a wrong dose for the ordered route presents significant risk for adverse drug events.Objective: To quantify and identify the characteristics of prescribing errors involving the route of drug administration.Design: Evaluation of medication orders with errors involving the route of administration detected by pharmacists in a 631-bed tertiary care teaching hospital over a 42-month period.Main Outcome Measures: Type, frequency, characteristics, potential for adverse effects, contributors, and enabling factors of medication prescribing errors involving the route of administration.Results: A total of 862 prescribing errors were detected. Sixty-one different types of route-related prescribing errors, involving 135 different medications, were detected. The most common type of these errors involved prescribing the wrong route of administration (39.2%) and prescribing the same or similar medications to be given concurrently by two routes (21.1 %). The ...