The Role of Drug Utilization Review (DUR) in Enhancing Patient Safety and Reducing Medication Errors in Pharmacies

Authors: Adinarayana Andy

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14122641

Short DOI: https://doi.org/g8qts8

Country: USA

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Abstract: Drug utilization review (DUR) is an essential process at the organizational and professional level occurring in pharmacies or other healthcare facilities, helping to enhance medication therapy, avoid mistakes, and improve a patient's status. This article focuses on the three forms of DUR and elaborates on their purposes in patient safety. Pre-service DUR takes place before the patient is prescribed the medication to detect potential problems such as wrong dosages and compatibility between the drugs. Concurrent DUR happens during the welding period and ensures that the reaction of the patients to the medications is well intensified and acted on if there are adverse reactions. Clinical DUR aims to review the past use of drugs. As a result, it provides information on more useful prescribing tempos in the future, such as over-prescribing or under-prescribing specific pharmaceuticals. The article further explained various factors that contribute to medication errors in the context of pharmacies and the multiple effects that relate to these medication errors in detail. Furthermore, it explained how DUR processes assist in reducing the risks involved herein.
Furthermore, it outlines how various technologies, including e-prescriptions and PSI, can improve the efficiency of the DUR. Incorporating DUR into pharmacy practice enables the decrease of medication errors and the provision of safer drug use, hence, healthcare improvement. Recent regulatory frameworks and political campaigns promoting outpatient DUR have also been calculated while stressing patient protection and pharmacological procedures.

Keywords: Drug Utilization Review (DUR), Patient Safety, Medication Errors, Prospective DUR, Concurrent DUR, Retrospective DUR, Pharmacy Information Systems, E-prescriptions, Medication Monitoring, Polypharmacy.

Paper Id: 231532

Published On: 2020-07-08

Published In: Volume 8, Issue 4, July-August 2020

Cite This: The Role of Drug Utilization Review (DUR) in Enhancing Patient Safety and Reducing Medication Errors in Pharmacies - Adinarayana Andy - IJIRMPS Volume 8, Issue 4, July-August 2020. DOI 10.5281/zenodo.14122641

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