Background and objectives: Evidence suggests that medication errors are among the most common types of medical errors, and over fifty percent of them are preventable. Since a significant proportion of these errors are related to the similarity between drug names, this study was designed to evaluate drugs with similar spelling, spelling and packaging.
Material and Methods: This is a qualitative study with phenomenological approach. Participants were selected by purposive sampling. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and with the help of previously designed guide. Data were analyzed using content analysis.
Results: The central themes of the findings of this study include: the accuracy of drug use, the way of recording and monitoring used medication, the storage, reporting, and notification of similar medications, verbal or telephone orders, medication lists with similar spelling, pronunciation and packaging and recommendations of the participants. The most errors in the Heparin-Atropine pair was the packaging of the drugs, spelling was the highest error in Dopamine- Dobutamine pair drug and spelling was the highest error in Atropine and Atorvastatin pair drug.
Conclusion: The study findings indicate that there is no certain system for recording, monitoring and storage of similar drugs. Therefore, identifying the medication list with similar pronunciation, spelling and packaging is an opportunity to reduce these types of errors with appropriate interventions.
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