ABSTRACT
Background:Correct prescription writing habits could have a great influence on the fate of drug therapy as well as the health of patients. The aim of the study was to determine the prescription writing errors from the outpatient department of pediatrics in a teaching Hospital.
Subject and methods: A nine month hospital based prospective study was carried out after obtaining ethical clearance certificate. A total of 220 prescriptions were randomly collected and analyzed.
Results: Among them 279 errors of omission related to prescriber and 236 errors of omission related to drugs with an average of 1.26 and1.07 error per prescription were reported respectively. Among errors of omission related to the prescriber, prescribers name was not written in 215 (97.72%) followed by weight18 (8.18%) and illegible prescriptions were 18(8.18%). Regarding errors omission related to the drugs, duration/no. of doses was not mentioned in124 (53.36%) followed by quantity to supply76 (34.54%), strength 26(11.80%) and frequency 10 (4.54%) of prescriptions respectively. A total of 79 errors of commission were reported with an average of 0.28 errors per prescription. Among them errors regarding wrong dosage form were 47(21.36%) followed by wrong strength13 (5.90%), wrong drug name11 (5%) and drug-drug interactions 8(3.63%) of prescriptions respectively.
Conclusion: The study results indicate that errors in prescription writing were significant at the study site, which highlights the need of conducting the educational programs to improve the prescription writing skills of the prescribers.

Keywords: Prescription, Errors, Omission, Commission, NCCMERP.