The frequency and nature of medication errors in hospitalized patients with acute coronary syndrome

Medication discrepancies identified by medication reconciliation among patients with acute coronary syndrome

Medication errors such as medication discrepancies are known as one of the leading cause of death. Medication discrepancies mostly occur during admission and at time transfer of care and discharge. Medication reconciliation process has pivotal role to avert medication discrepancies and improve patient safety and quality. Patients with acute coronary syndrome (ACS) are prone to medication discrepancies due to acute manifestations, simultaneous use of different medicines and having different co-morbidities. This study aimed to determine medication discrepancies identified by medication reconciliation among patients with ACS. In an observational study, patients with ACS admitted to a specialized Hospital in Baneh County, Kurdistan province during September 2023 and January 2024 were included. Medication reconciliation process was done when the patient was admitted. The history of medicine use was collected through interviews with the patient, their caregivers, as well as observing the medicines that were accompany with the patients. Number and type of unintentional medication discrepancies and related factors were evaluated. A total of 280 ACS patients (mean age: 63.8 ± 14.2, male gender: 59.3%) were included in the study. About 68% had at least 2 underlying diseases. The mean daily medicines taken by the patients during admission were 8.5 ± 1.54. The number (percentage) of unintentional inconsistency was observed in 78 (27.3%), and omission (39.7%) and changes in dosage (20.5%) had the highest frequency of unintentional medication discrepancies, respectively. Cardiovascular agents such as anti-dyslipidemia and antiplatelet had the highest frequency of unintentional medication discrepancies. The number of underlying diseases and daily medications before hospitalization increase the odds of discrepancies by 2.15 and 1.49 times, respectively (p-value < 0.05). Medication discrepancies identified by medication reconciliation among patients is relatively common. Unintentional medication discrepancies that have the potential to harm the ACS patients should be given more attention, especially in patients with multiple comorbidities and polypharmacy.

Medication error and associated factors among adults admitted to emergency ward at the university of Gondar comprehensive specialized hospital, North-West Ethiopia: a cross-sectional study, 2022

BACKGROUND

Medication errors are the most common cause of preventable adverse drug events at the emergency ward.

OBJECTIVES

This study assessed medication errors and associated factors among adult patients admitted to the emergency ward at the University of Gondar Comprehensive Specialized Hospital, North-West Ethiopia.

METHODS

A cross-sectional study was conducted from June 1, 2022, to August 30, 2022. Data were entered into EpiData Manager 4.6.0.0 for clearing and exported to SPSS version 24 for analysis. Descriptive statistics such as frequencies, medians with an interquartile range and inferential statistics like binary logistic regression were used for data analysis. The level of significance was declared at a p value less than 0.05 with a 95% confidence interval.

RESULTS

From 422 study participants, medication errors were found in three-fourths (74.4%) of study participants. The most frequent type of medication error was omitted dose (26.27%). From a total of 491 medication errors, 97.75% were not prevented before reaching patients. More than one-third (38.9%) of medication errors had potentially moderate harmful outcomes. More than half (55.15%) of possible causes of medication errors committed by staff are due to behavioral factors. Physicians accepted 99.16% and nurses accepted 98.71% of clinical pharmacist intervention. Hospital stay ≥ 6 days (AOR: 3.00 95% CI 1.65-5.45, p < 0.001), polypharmacy (AOR: 5.47, 95% CI 2.77-10.81 p < 0.001), and Charlson comorbidity index ≥ 3 (AOR: 1.94, 95% CI (1.02-3.68), p < 0.04) significantly associated with medication error.

CONCLUSIONS

About three-fourths of adult patients admitted to the emergency ward experienced medication errors. A considerable amount of medication errors were potentially moderately harmful. Most medication errors were due to behavioral factors. Most clinical pharmacists' interventions were accepted by physicians and nurses. Patients who stayed longer at the emergency ward, had a Charlson comorbidity index value of ≥ 3, and were on polypharmacy were at high risk of medication error. The hospital should strive to reduce medication errors at the emergency ward.

Implementation and effectiveness of pharmacist-led interviews at patient hospital admission in a rheumatology department

OBJECTIVES

Medication reconciliation is time-consuming and its complete deployment can be difficult. The implementation of a simplified process, such as patient interviews at admission without full reconciliation, may contribute to improve patient care. The objective of the present study was to describe the feasibility and assess the potential effectiveness of implementing pharmacist-led interviews at patient admission to a rheumatology department.

METHODS

This is a prospective observational study of pharmacist-led interviews at patient admission conducted between April 2015 and May 2017 in the 34-bed rheumatology department of Edouard Herriot Hospital, a French university hospital. These interviews were structured to explore patient medication management at home. The main outcome was the number of medication errors at admission. Other outcomes were the total number of interviews, the number of interviews with at least one new item of information provided by the patient, the number of interviews with at least one medication error detected, and the number of interviews leading to a modification of the hospital medication order.

RESULTS

A total of 247 interviews were carried out; there was an increase in the number of interviews over the study period (n=54 in 2015, n=98 in 2016, and n=95 for the first 5 months of 2017). Among the interviews conducted, 135 (55%) provided new information concerning patient medication management and 117 medication errors were identified in hospital orders (0.47/patient). There were 76 interviews (31%) with at least one medication error; all led to a medication order modification.

CONCLUSIONS

The study found that pharmacist-led interviews at patient admission were effective in detecting medication errors. They could be an alternative to a full medication reconciliation process in targeted situations. When the patient interview does not provide sufficiently robust information, full medication reconciliation may be performed.

Failure mode and effect analysis applied to improve the medication management process in a pharmacy of a teaching hospital and a proposal for a simplified rating system

BACKGROUND

Healthcare is not as safe as it should be and medication error remains a significant source of preventable morbidity and mortality among patients.

OBJECTIVES

To present a failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) of the medication management process in the pharmacy of the largest teaching hospital in Tunisia. Secondly, to examine the validity of a proposed simplified risk rating method by comparing the degree of concordance with the FMEA rating system in classifying failure modes related to the studied process.

METHODS

The FMEA method was applied to the medication management process in the pharmacy for 5 months from January 2020. For the traditional FMEA rating system, failure modes were prioritised according to the risk priority number, which considers severity, occurrence and non-detectability. Failure modes were classified for the traditional method considering three categories: accepted, requiring control and critical. The proposed rating system was based on two indices: the number of parts, which reflected severity, and the number of causes according to the 5M method (manpower, machines, material, methods and medium), which reflected occurrence. Failure modes were classified for the proposed method considering three categories: low, medium and high. Failure modes were independently analysed to determine the degree of agreement in ranking of risk between the two studied methods. Prioritised failure modes were targeted by decisions and solutions aiming to reduce risk and enhance safety.

RESULTS

Twenty-four failure modes were identified for the six-step process of medication management in a pharmacy (overall criticality=2607). The most critical failure modes were: data error in drugs reception (risk priority number (RPN)=432), break in the cold chain (RPN=320) and non-optimal pharmaceutical analysis (RPN=280). A good agreement was found between the classic FMEA and the proposed rating methods (κ=0.795). A high correlation was shown between the two scorings (r=0.785). Three failure modes were underestimated by the proposed rating method.

CONCLUSIONS

An FMEA study on the medication management process in a teaching pharmacy showed that FMEA is an effective, proactive risk assessment that enables a better understanding of the studied process. The proposed risk scoring permits a good concordance with the classic method, with the advantage of being fast. Targeting the identified risks will allow integration into a continuous process of improvement and increase patient safety.

Medication errors and risk areas in a critical care unit

AIMS

The aim of this study was to identify the main medication errors, their causality and the highest risk areas in critical care.

DESIGN

A descriptive, longitudinal and retrospective study.

METHODS

We performed a systematic analysis of the prescription, transcription and administration records of 2,634 dose units of medications that were administered to a total of 87 critically ill patients during 2018.

RESULTS

Final results have shown important medication errors and a high number of significant drug interactions; prescription phase had the highest mistake rate (71%) and cause of errors (68%); transcription stage had a more variable error typology. A significant correlation was observed between the presence of causes and contributing factors to error during the prescription and the commission of errors during the nurse transcription, being the main risk areas the time of antibiotic administration, dilution errors, concentration and speed of administration of high-risk medications and the technique used for nasogastric tube drug administration.

CONCLUSION

In critical care, an intolerable number of medication errors are still committed, placing the origin of many of them in the causality and contributing factors identified in the prescription stage.

IMPACT

The origin of many of the medication errors and most interactions is in the prescription stage, being the nurse transcription (nurse intervention) in an important filter that prevents a considerable number of errors from finally reaching the patient. The schedule of administration of time-dependent antibiotics, high-risk medications and the technique of administering medications through a nasogastric tube are important risk areas for the commission of medication errors.

Collaboration between cardiologist and clinical pharmacist on prescription quality: What is the potential clinical impact for cardiology patients?

OBJECTIVES

The aim of this study was to determine the effect of pharmacists' interventions (PI) on the potential clinical impact of medication errors, including the lack of therapeutic optimisation of patients with cardiologic diseases, such as heart failure and acute coronary syndrome).

METHODS

This was an observational, prospective study conducted in the cardiology department of a French university hospital centre for a duration of 9 months. All prescriptions were analysed and PI were registered for clinical rating by pharmacists and cardiologist.

RESULTS

A total of 532 PI cases were recorded in 339 patients, with a mean of 1.57 (±1.04) PI. The PI acceptance rate was 98.1%. "Dose adjustment" and "introduction therapy" were the most common interventions and represented 38.0% and 32.9%, respectively, of all PI. Statins were the most frequently involved drugs (18.1%), followed by ACE (Angiotensin Converting Enzyme) inhibitors (10.9%) and antiplatelet agents (9.3%). Moreover, 13.8% of PI potentially avoided a severe or very severe clinical impact (n = 71) and 38.6% had a significant impact altering the quality of life (n = 198). There was no significant difference between the average score performed by the clinical pharmacist included in the cardiology team and the one obtained by the cardiologist (P = .797). In contrast, a significant difference was observed for the average score established by the pharmacist localised in central pharmacy versus the rating of the cardiologist (P < .001).

CONCLUSIONS

The collaboration between clinical pharmacists and cardiologists in the medical units seems to be beneficial to the quality of prescriptions, including the implementation of recommendations. The good rate of PI acceptance and the similar rating with the cardiologist show that there is a change in perspective of the pharmacist, being closer to the clinical reality.

Medication errors in hospitals in the Middle East: a systematic review of prevalence, nature, severity and contributory factors

PURPOSE

The aim was to critically appraise, synthesise and present the evidence of medication errors amongst hospitalised patients in Middle Eastern countries, specifically prevalence, nature, severity and contributory factors.

METHODS

CINAHL, Embase, Medline, Pubmed and Science Direct were searched for studies published in English from 2000 to March 2018, with no exclusions. Study selection, quality assessment (using adapted STROBE checklists) and data extraction were conducted independently by two reviewers. A narrative approach to data synthesis was adopted; data related to error causation were synthesised according to Reason's Accident Causation model.

RESULTS

Searching yielded 452 articles, which were reduced to 50 following removal of duplicates and screening of titles, abstracts and full-papers. Studies were largely from Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan. Thirty-two studies quantified errors; definitions of 'medication error' were inconsistent as were approaches to data collection, severity assessment, outcome measures and analysis. Of 13 studies reporting medication errors per 'total number of medication orders'/ 'number of prescriptions', the median across all studies was 10% (IQR 2-35). Twenty-four studies reported contributory factors leading to errors. Synthesis according to Reason's model identified the most common being active failures, largely slips (10 studies); lapses (9) and mistakes (12); error-provoking conditions, particularly lack of knowledge (13) and insufficient staffing levels (13) and latent conditions, commonly heavy workload (9).

CONCLUSION

There is a need to improve the quality and reporting of studies from Middle Eastern countries. A standardised approach to quantifying medication errors' prevalence, severity, outcomes and contributory factors is warranted.