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Effectiveness of Implementation of a New Drug Storage Label and Error-Reducing Process on the Accuracy of Drug Dispensing

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Abstract

This study evaluated the effectiveness of implementation of an improved storage label and an error-reducing process on the incidence of drug-dispensing errors. A total of 27 pharmacists (11 male and 16 female) were included. Questionnaires were distributed to pharmacists to measure their degree of satisfaction with the format and content of the labels. The questionnaires were completed before and one month after implementation of new label. Pharmacists were also requested to follow a new error-reducing dispensing process by circling the following items on the new storage label: drug name, appearance, packaging, dose, and formulation. The pharmacists’ degrees of satisfaction increased significantly after implementation of the new label with respect to these questionnaire items: all label format items, edition appropriateness, use of capital fonts to distinguish similar drug names, reminder images to help with drug differentiation, and complete label information. The outpatient monthly drug-dispensing error rate was significantly decreased.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Pharmacy, Kaohsiung Medical University, 100 Shih-Chuan 1st Rd., Kaohsiung, 80708, Taiwan

    Mei-Hua Chuang & Thau-Ming Cham

  2. Department of Pharmacy, Buddhist Dalin Tzuchi General Hospital, No2., Min-Sheng Rd., Dalin Town, Chiayi, Taiwan

    Mei-Hua Chuang & Mei Chen

  3. Department of Nuclear Medicine, Buddhist Dalin Tzuchi General Hospital, Chiayi, Taiwan

    Yuh-Feng Wang

  4. College of Medicine, Tzuchi University, Hualien, Taiwan

    Yuh-Feng Wang

Authors
  1. Mei-Hua Chuang
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  2. Yuh-Feng Wang
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  3. Mei Chen
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  4. Thau-Ming Cham
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Correspondence to Thau-Ming Cham.

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Chuang, MH., Wang, YF., Chen, M. et al. Effectiveness of Implementation of a New Drug Storage Label and Error-Reducing Process on the Accuracy of Drug Dispensing. J Med Syst 36, 1469–1474 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-010-9607-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-010-9607-8

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