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Top2. Background
MDE is defined as a mismatch of the medication actually taken by the patient vis-à-vis those given in the documented prescription, an incident of MDE can often happen in multiple ways, including, but not limited to, a wrong medicine being delivered, an incorrect concentration and/or dosage of the medicine is being prepared, or even having the right medication, but sending it to the wrong location, the wrong patient and/or at the wrong timing. Unfortunately, most if not all of these preventable MDEs can have serious consequences, which may lead, in some cases, to permanent disability or even death. Indeed, it is estimated that over 250,000 people die yearly due to medication errors in the US (Anderson & Abrahamson, 2017; Ker et al, 2010).
Similarly, Hartnell et al. (2014) claimed that such medication errors can engender annual losses of over 7 billion € in term of medication wastage. In the absence of a reliable decisive tool, the causes of dispensing errors, made by pharmacists or via a dispenser, can only be traced by self-evaluation techniques, for example, the deployment of a well-designed survey or questionnaire. Importantly, different researchers have alluded to various qualitative factors linked chiefly to these causes, for example, being under-staffed or time pressed, overload command, work fatigue, physical and/or mental obstruction during medication dispensing and “look-alike/sound-alike” medication issues (Anacleto et al., 2005; Edoh et al, 2016; Berdotet al., 2019; Seidling & Bates, 2019; Caleres et al., 2020).