In accord with the National Coordinating Council for Medication Error Reporting and Prevention, Medication errors can be defined as "any preventable event that may cause or lead to inappropriate medication use or patient harm while the medication is in the control of the health care professional, patient, or consumer." The improper use of medicines is a serious issue that affects thousands of people, especially older persons and children who are more susceptible to complications and infections. Due to the increasing number of victims, the Food and Drug Administration has implemented certain rules to reduce medication errors through the use of bar code in the medicines. The main purpose of this regulation is to make sure that the right drug has the necessary dose as well as the correct instructions of administration.
However, several factors contribute to the incurrence of common medication errors. In particular, the lack of communication plays a key role during a medical appointment since only the doctor knows the answers to all the patient's questions. Communication should be carried out not only with the physician but also with nurses and families, so that they are informed of what medications and directions they have to follow. For this reason, patients should ask the name of the drug, what the purpose of the drug is, what side effects does it have, and how often should be taken. All these questions should be clarified by the physician to make sure that the patient understood the instructions concerning the use of the medicine. It is also useful that the patient ask for a copy of the prescription because if the patient has problems understanding what was written by the doctor, probably the pharmacist will also have trouble interpreting the doctor's handwriting. Consequently, the patient may receive the wrong medicine, the wrong dose, or none medicine at all.
For patients, it is important to comprehend clearly what the drug's directions are in order to avoid intoxication or any other complication. Besides this, some pharmacists may confuse the name of the drug dispensing a different medicine from the one prescribed by the doctor especially when the employee lacks knowledge about the drug or the handwriting in the prescription is not clear. In order to prevent prescription drug errors, many doctors recommend asking everything about medicines, bringing all the medicines that patients are taking, checking the drugs received to confirm that they correspond to the ones ordered by the physician. These suggestions help improve people's quality of life and drug safety.