Suzilawati Mohamed Ariffin , Abdullah Hafiz Abdul Aziz, Khin Thandar Aung, Salizar Mohamed Ludin

1204smaj@gmail.com

Introduction: Medication error is a global issue. A holistic approach is important to prevent medication error includes contributed factor, reporting system and training for staffs.

Objective: This research sought to determine the pharmacists’ perception on medication errors in intensive care unit.

Methodology: A descriptive cross-sectional study was involved 132 pharmacists from two hospitals. A self-administrated questionnaire was used to collect data. Statistical analysis of the data was carried out using SPSS and association between variables was analyzed using one way ANOVA and multiple regression tests.

Result: The findings show that interruptions (= 3.40) as the commonest cause of dispensing errors perceived by pharmacists, followed by pharmacists fatigue at any cause (= 3.20) and pharmacist overwork (= 3.17). Besides, 51% of participants practice dispensing less than 10 hours per week in average. 54% and 55% of participants believe the increase of risk of error in dispensing and actual errors become more common in pharmacy practice respectively. The results also showed only level of education has significant association with possible factors in dispensing medication among the pharmacists at hospital (P=0.000). Besides, multiple regression analysis results no significant relationship between both dependent variables.

Conclusion: This study suggests that pharmacists should be well informed regarding dispensing error in order to be more alert. Besides, future study should be more specific on pharmacists who assigned at inpatient department.