Medication errors are a leading cause of death rate in the U.
S.
21% of dispensing errors are considered for all medication mistakes.
In addition to serious death rates, these errors improve the economic pressure on community by including in medical care expenses.
Defective dispensing may also outcome in lawsuits, which can be expensive and lead to increased expenses for professional insurance policy.
Dispensing errors are stressful for the pharmacologist as well as the patient; therefore, the objective of every drugstore is to decrease the amount of dispensing errors.
Dispensing errors include inconsistencies from the prescription order, such as dispensing the wrong medication, dosage form, wrong quantity, or insufficient marking.

• Beware of look-alike, sound-alike drugs: Similar drug labels are considered for one third of medication errors.
  These types of errors are linked to verification prejudice - a propensity to understand information in a way that verifies someone's opinions and prevents details and understanding that oppose prior values.
  As an example, a new, different medication may be read as an older, more familiar one.
  
• Ensure correct entry of the prescription: These errors can be reduced by continuously using reliable methods to verify individual identity while entering the prescribed order into the computer.
  This technique helps prevent medication errors due to sound-alike, look-alike names.
  At this point in the process, it is also useful to have information about the patient, such as the age, concomitant medicines, therapeutic duplications, and the similar ones.
  
• Focus on reducing the stress and balancing heavy workloads: Amount of work increase is often mentioned as a contributing factor in dispensing errors.
  Regular breaks and time off for meal breaks may help to decrease some of the dispensing errors.
  Sharing responsibilities by clearly assigning responsibilities to the staff will help them understand the objectives of the flow of work and may ultimately aid in reducing workplace pressure, and, therefore, reduce medication errors.
  
• Take enough time to store medication properly: One way to avoid mix-ups among look alike medication is to place them away from each other in the medication storage place.
  Medication bottles should be effectively organized with brands facing forward.
  It is also a wise decision to consistently examine all medicines on the racks and remove any expired medicines.
  Use of storage space containers, units, that can result in misplacement of look-alike medications.
  It is also recommended to lock up medication with high potential of causing mistakes.
  
• Thoroughly examine all the prescriptions: Repeated verifying and counter-checking is an essential way to reduce dispensing errors.
  Confirmation bias and preconceived thoughts makes self-checking a poor method to minimize errors.
  Whenever possible, it is desirable to have the rechecking done by other person, typically a pharmacologist.
  If this is not possible, delayed self-checking rather than ongoing self-checking is an alternate technique.
  

The goal of every pharmacologist is to reduce the dispensing errors.
Patient guidance being the last factor between the patient, pharmacologist, and medication in the dispensing process is the most essential technique that every pharmacologist must adopt in order to minimize dispensing errors.