Objective: To determine medication errors in a public and in a private hospital.
Method: Cross-sectional. 638 dosis opportunities for errors (administered dosis + omitted dosis) were assessed in January, 2005. Medication error was defined as any given dose different from a legible prescription on patient chart. The error rate was calculated by the following equation: number of dosis/error opportunities. The errors were classified according to the categories: omission, unordered dose, extra-dose, wrong dose, wrong route, wrong form, wrong time.
Results: Out of 638 opportunities of error, 209 (32,9%) were wrong in some way. When wrong time errors were excluded, this rate decreased to 156 (25%). The most frequent types of errors were omission and unordered dosis, 67 (10,5%) and 65 (10,2%), respectively. There was no significant difference on the total error rate according to the type of hospital (public or private).
Conclusions: The public hospital showed a double-fold unordered dose error rate as compared to the private hospital. Inversely, the private hospital showed a double-fold wrong time error rate than the public hospital.