Prescribing errors incidence in hospitalized Saudi patients: Methodology considerations

Medication errors are the leading cause of adverse drug events (ADEs) and most commonly occur in the prescribing stage (Bates et al., 1995; Aljadhey et al., 2013). A systematic review of 65 studies that investigated the prevalence and incidence of prescribing errors conducted in 2009 in the UK concluded that prescribing errors occur in 7% of medication orders, 2% of patient days and 50% of hospital admissions (Lewis et al., 2009). In Saudi Arabia majority of the studies conducted to investigate prescribing errors came from the primary care settings. However, hospitalized patients received little attention.