Availability of Antidotes in Kuwait: A National Audit

Effective management of poisoning requires adequate stocking of antidotes in hospitals that provide emergency care. Antidote stocking represents a major challenge to hospitals all over the world, including Kuwait.

This study aimed to evaluate antidote stocking in public and private hospitals that provide emergency care in Kuwait.

A cross-sectional study using a self-administered questionnaire was conducted from January to December 2018. The questionnaire was designed to assess immediate and non-immediate availability of 41 antidotes in 6 public and 13 private hospitals in Kuwait that provided emergency care. The questionnaire was provided to the pharmacy departments of these hospitals, which were asked to report the availability of antidotes and the reasons for non-availability. Descriptive statistics were used to report demographical data and independent t-test analysis was used to analyze continuous variables.

All of the six public hospitals in Kuwait and eight private hospitals returned the completed questionnaires. Among the 14 hospitals surveyed, none had a complete stock of all essential antidotes. The mean (standard deviation [SD]) availability of immediate antidotes in public hospitals was 79.6% (32.6%) compared to 52.1% (44.4%) in private hospitals. Moreover, the mean (SD) availability of non-immediate antidotes was 64.5% (37.7%) in public hospitals compared to 14.7% (22.8%) in private hospitals.

Public and private hospitals in Kuwait have suboptimal stocks of essential antidotes. There is an urgent need to develop expert consensus guidelines to assist hospitals to reduce costs and improve patient care by adequately stocking essential antidotes.