RECURRENCE OF MEDICAL PRESCRIPTION ERRORS IN BRAZILIAN HOSPITALS AND HEALTH UNITS

Abstract

A medical prescription is defined as the prescription of medication(s), written in Portuguese, containing detailed guidelines regarding its use, and its variables, carried out by a legally qualified professional, constituting the conclusion of the procedures of a medical act. Within the quality standards and complying with laws, norms and guidelines determined by regulatory bodies, medical prescription is preponderant in the prevention and treatment of diseases. However, some specific factors can compromise interpretation and understanding, presenting impasses in this process. The incidence of errors and the absence of essential elements can lead to delays in hospital processes, difficulty in understanding, misunderstandings and erroneous assumptions, resulting in damage to health or, in worse circumstances, fatal impacts. The recurrence of medical prescription errors is frequent in Brazilian hospital institutions, and puts the safety and life of the patient at risk. In this way, studies that presuppose and evidence a data quantification in relation to prescription errors, statistically analyzed, constitutes an important step for further investigation of the raised causes, knowledge of associated factors and proposals for mitigation of identified failures. According to the selected scientific works and data collected during the bibliographic study, it appears that there are few scientific works aimed at identifying, analyzing and estimating recurrence at a national level, which signals an unfavorable situation for a better understanding of the theme and proposal of advances and dealings with the problem presented. Therefore, this study aims to identify, in the light of the literature analyzed, the recurrence of errors in medical prescriptions in Brazilian health institutions, considering the variables contained therein.