Frecuencia y características de los errores de prescripción en los hospitales básicos cantonales de la provincia del Azuay, enero - diciembre del 2016

Background: The medical prescription is a legal and ethical act, which reflects the therapeutic ability of the doctor, which is influenced by different factors; for this reason, prescription preparation is vulnerable to errors that can lead to an inefficient delivery of medical attention. General Objective: To determine the frequency and characteristics of prescription errors in the county hospitals in the province of Azuay. Methodology: The study is descriptive. The population was constituted by 9034 hospital prescriptions registered in the medical records, from which a sample of 366 prescriptions was taken by stratified random sampling. The data collection was carried out using variables based on those used in previous studies, which was submitted to a process of validation by experts and a pilot application. For the data analysis we used the statistical software SPSS v24.0; the qualitative variables with frequency and percentage. Results: 366 hospital prescriptions were reviewed, of which 327 (89,3%) presented at least one error. The number of errors found in total were 819, the most frequent errors are: use of abbreviations with 68,5%, followed by the omission of prescription seal with 40% and the lack of sequence in the prescription with 32% of the total errors. Conclusions: Frequency of prescription errors among the county hospitals is elevated. The study concluded that the most vulnerable errors are: the use of abbreviations not recognized by the MSP, omission of the seal and lack of sequence in the prescription.