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Pharmacy quality improvement project to enhance the medication management process in pediatric patients
1Department of Clinical Pharmacy Practice, Faculty of Pharmacy, The British University in Egypt, Misr-Ismalia Road, Postal No. 11837, P.O. Box 43, El Sherouk City, Cairo, Egypt. nersoud09@gmail.com.
Insights
A quality improvement project significantly reduced medication errors in a children's hospital pediatric ward. Pharmacist-led interventions decreased prescribing, administration, and monitoring errors from over 47% to under 15% in nine months.
Area of Science:
- Healthcare Quality Improvement
- Pharmaceutical Care
- Pediatric Pharmacy Practice
Background:
- Medication management quality is vital in modern healthcare.
- Drug-related problems impact patient safety and treatment efficacy.
- Optimizing pharmaceutical care services is essential in pediatric settings.
Purpose of the Study:
- To enhance medication management quality in pediatric specialty care.
- To design and implement a quality improvement project targeting pharmaceutical care services.
- To reduce drug-related problems during prescribing, administration, and monitoring in a children's hospital.
Main Methods:
- Reviewed 900 pediatric medical files to identify medication errors.
- Developed three pharmacy quality indicators for error detection.
- Utilized quality improvement tools like brainstorming and fishbone charts.
- Implemented educational programs, clinical pharmacy, IV admixture, and drug information services.
Main Results:
- Quality improvement interventions successfully reduced medication errors.
- Error rates in prescribing, administration, and monitoring decreased significantly.
- Medication errors reduced from 47%, 60%, and 56% to ≤15% within nine months.
Conclusions:
- Pharmacists play a critical role in enhancing healthcare quality.
- Quality improvement projects can effectively minimize medication errors in pediatric care.
- These findings are particularly relevant for healthcare systems in developing countries.
Background:
Improvement in the quality of the medication management process is a crucial component of twenty-first-century medicine.
Aim:
To improve the quality of medication management process within pediatric specialty through designing a quality improvement project for the pharmaceutical care services in a children' hospital to solve the drug-related problems during drug prescribing, administration, and monitoring.
Methods:
A total of 900 medical files were evaluated (100 file/month) from the pediatric medical ward to detect any medication errors during prescribing, administration, or monitoring of the drugs. Three pharmacy quality indicators were designed to detect any medication errors during prescribing, administration, or monitoring of the drugs, then a collective datasheet was designed to record any defect in the system during drug management process within the hospital. A quality improvement project was designed using many quality improvement techniques to decrease the rates of medication errors in each drug handling stage. Brainstorming, fishbone chart, questionnaire, and voting were the main quality tools used to detect the causes of medication errors problem in pediatric patients. Certain actions were implemented which included educational program, implementation of clinical pharmacy, intravenous admixture, and drug information services.
Results:
The quality improvement interventions succeeded in decreasing the rates of medication errors in each stage. These interventions succeeded in decreasing the rates of medication errors in prescribing, administration, and monitoring stages from 47, 60, and 56% respectively to ≤ 15% within 9 months.
Conclusion:
Pharmacists can have a key role in improving the health-care system's quality in developing countries' health-care systems.
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