Effect of emergency medicine pharmacists on medication-error reporting in an emergency department

The effect of an emergency medicine (EM) clinical pharmacist on medication-error reporting in an emergency department (ED) was studied.

The medication-error reports for patients seen at a university's ED between September 1, 2005, and February 28, 2009, were retrospectively reviewed. Errors reported before the addition of an EM pharmacist (from September 1, 2005, through February 28, 2006) were compared with those reported after the addition of two EM pharmacists (from September 1, 2008, through February 28, 2009). The severity of errors and the provider who reported the errors were characterized.

A total of 402 medication errors were reported over the two time periods. Pharmacy personnel captured significantly more errors than did other health care personnel (94.5% versus 5.7%, p < 0.001). The addition of two EM pharmacists resulted in 14.8 times as many medication-error reports as were made when no EM pharmacist was in the ED. More errors that actually occurred were captured with two pharmacists providing care (95.7% versus 4.3%, p < 0.001). A majority of the errors documented were ordering errors (79.8%). Of these, 73.7% were captured after the addition of two EM pharmacists. Performance (40.0%) and knowledge (27.9%) deficits were the most common contributing factors to medication errors.

During the study period after the addition of two EM pharmacists in the ED, 371 medication-error reports were completed, compared with 31 reports during the study period before the addition of the pharmacists. Pharmacy personnel reported the majority of medication errors during both study periods.