de Castro RDNS, de Aguiar LB, Volpe CRG, Silva CMDS, da Silva ICR, Stival MM, da Silva EN, Meiners MMMDA, Schwerz Funghetto S. Determining Medication Errors in an Adult Intensive Care Unit.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH AND PUBLIC HEALTH 2023;
20:6788. [PMID:
37754646 PMCID:
PMC10531059 DOI:
10.3390/ijerph20186788]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/26/2023] [Revised: 08/24/2023] [Accepted: 09/04/2023] [Indexed: 09/28/2023]
Abstract
INTRODUCTION
Research addressing the costs of Medication errors (MEs) is still scarce despite issues related to patient safety having significant economic and health impacts, making it imperative to analyze the costs and adverse events related to MEs for a better patient, professional, and institutional safety.
AIM
To identify the number of medication errors and verify whether this number was associated with increased hospitalization costs for patients in an Intensive Care Unit (ICU).
METHOD
This retrospective cross-sectional cohort study evaluated secondary data from patients' electronic medical records to compile variables, create a model, and survey hospitalization costs. The statistical analysis included calculating medication error rates, descriptive analysis, and simple and multivariate regression.
RESULTS
The omission error rate showed the highest number of errors per drug dose (59.8%) and total errors observed in the sample (55.31%), followed by the time error rate (26.97%; 24.95%). The omission error had the highest average when analyzing the entire hospitalization (170.40) and day of hospitalization (13.79). Hospitalization costs were significantly and positively correlated with scheduling errors, with an increase of BRL 121.92 (about USD $25.00) (95% CI 43.09; 200.74), and to prescription errors, with an increase of BRL 63.51 (about USD $3.00) (95% CI 29.93; 97.09).
CONCLUSION
We observed an association between two types of medication errors and increased hospitalization costs in an adult ICU (scheduling and prescription errors).
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