# Medication Errors Detected in Primary Health Care after Hospital Discharge
## 4 Discussion
Other research stated a total of 42.9% of patients with discrepancies, with a mean of 2.1 medication errors per patient [7]. Other research, performed in a hospital, detected that a total of 55.1% of the admitted patients had one or more medication errors, with a mean of 3.2 medication errors per patient [21]. Several studies that performed conciliation in primary health care, after hospital discharge, found discrepancies in 40-60% of the medications of the analyzed patients [7; 12; 19]. Our figures are in concordance with these previous publications. Regarding medication errors, omission error was the most frequent error found in our research. This finding agrees with the results of other studies, which found this error in 40-60% of the analyzed patients [12; 13; 16; 17], although we must consider that they were performed in hospitals. This is also confirmed by the Spanish Institute for Safe Medication, which stated that, in the year 2020, medication omission was the most frequent medication error, and with the most severe consequences [22]. Regarding the sex and the different age groups of the patients, the prevalence of medication errors found in our research was bigger in women of 65 and older, when compared to men of the same age. Although these differences were statistically significant, we have not found similar research with medication errors categorized by gender and groups of age. In the 20-34 age strata, the percentage of medication errors was higher for women than men, which was different from other age strata. A possible explanation for this finding is that, in that age strata, the number of women was higher than men, and there was thus a higher number of drugs prescribed to women in this age strata. Therefore, the likelihood of finding medication errors was higher among women, in this specific age strata. Our results show that primary health care plays an essential role in the process of medication conciliation, as it is accessible for patients and caregivers, and offers a comprehensive vision of the patient, and its social and familiar circle [3; 12; 15]. As a conclusion, it could be useful to implement the conciliation process among all the physicians of primary health care. This way, this process could be integrated into their daily workflow, allowing the detection of numerous potential errors. To accomplish this, the support of all stakeholders and additional resources, such as more time to perform the process, are required. In addition, it could be useful to perform more research about medication conciliation in the primary healthcare environment. Our research had some limitations. One of the most significant limitations is that our study was performed using the database of the Andalusian Public Health Service, therefore only the medication conciliations performed using this software could be analyzed. The conciliations performed in private practice, or the medications that were used by the patients but not communicated to the physicians, could not be included in this research. We must also consider that the sample was obtained from four hospital services, an aspect that could generate a potential selection bias. Therefore, these potential limitations must be considered when interpreting the external validity of our results. Our research also had some strengths. The most important is that the process of conciliation analyzed was systematic, using an online conciliation tool. This ensures that all primary care physicians followed the same process, reducing the variability of the process and therefore increasing the reliability of the analysis. Another strength of our research is that our sample size was 6115 patients, larger than the sample analyzed in other similar research.