Safe Medication Reconciliation: An Intervention to Improve Residents' Medication Reconciliation Skills

Medication errors during hospitalization are a major patient safety concern. Medication reconciliation is an effective tool to reduce medication errors, yet internal medicine residents rarely receive formal education on the process.

We assessed if an educational intervention on quality improvement principles and effective medication reconciliation for internal medicine residents will lead to fewer medication discrepancies and more accurate discharge medication lists.

From July 2012 to May 2013, internal medicine residents from 3 academic institutions who were rotating at the Washington DC VA Medical Center received twice-monthly interactive educational sessions on medication reconciliation, using both institutional summary metrics and data from their own discharges. Sessions were led by a faculty member or chief resident. Accuracy of discharge instructions for residents in the intervention group was compared to the accuracy of discharge data from June 2012 for a group of residents who did not receive the intervention. We used χ(2) analysis to assess for differences.

The number of duplicate medications (23% versus 12%, P = .01); extraneous medications (14% versus 6%, P = .014); medications sorted by disease or indication (25% versus 77%, P < .001); and the number of discrepancies in discharge summaries (34% versus 11%, P < .001) statistically improved. No difference in the number of omissions was found between the 2 groups (17% versus 15%, P = .62).

An educational intervention targeting internal medicine residents can be implemented with reasonable staff and time costs, and is effective in reducing the number of medication discrepancies at discharge.