Assessment of Dosing Errors in pediatric Patients Prescriptions in Basra City

Pediatrics needs special care in drug prescription as any even a small error could lead to a significant harmful effect on their health. This work aimed to evaluate the doses and duration of medications prescribed for children in the hospital’s outpatient clinic and a private clinic and checking them, according to children's weight and age, using BNF for children (2018). Results revealed a higher rate of dosing error in the hospital’s outpatient clinic (64%) compared with the private clinic (34%) [p-value 0.002]. Most of the errors were seen in antibiotics (49%), bronchodilator (52%), antipyretic and analgesics (30%), antihistamines (15%), nasal decongestant (13%), and antiemetic (9%). Pediatric dosing errors were common in both hospital outpatients and private clinics. The health institutions should give more efforts for training health care providers and monitoring the pediatric prescriptions to minimize the dosing errors.