Types, trends, and patterns of the reported antimicrobial errors to the eastern region's medical centers in Saudi...

Area of Science:

• Pharmacovigilance
• Drug Safety
• Healthcare Quality Improvement

Background:

• Medication errors (MEs) pose a significant threat to patient safety, contributing to morbidity and mortality.
• While MEs are widely studied, high-risk medications like antimicrobials require focused analysis.
• Antimicrobial errors represent a substantial portion of overall medication errors, necessitating targeted interventions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To analyze medication errors specifically involving antimicrobials.
• To identify the most common antimicrobials associated with errors, error types, contributing factors, and error categories.
• To provide data-driven recommendations for reducing antimicrobial medication errors.

Main Methods:

• Retrospective analysis of a medication errors database from Saudi Arabian medical centers (January 2019 - December 2019).
• Descriptive analysis to categorize antimicrobial errors based on type, stage, contributing factors, and NCC-MERP classification.
• Identification of the most frequently implicated antimicrobial agents.

Main Results:

• Antimicrobial errors constituted 22.1% (1422 out of 6412) of all medication errors.
• Amoxicillin/Clavulanate was the most common antimicrobial involved in errors (18%).
• Errors predominantly occurred during the prescribing phase (87.6%), with incorrect doses (32.1%) and duplicate therapy (20.5%) being most frequent. Most errors were Category B (72.5%), and inexperienced personnel (57.9%) was the primary contributing factor.

Conclusions:

• Antimicrobial errors are concentrated in the prescribing stage, influenced by policy gaps and staff inexperience.
• Recommendations include enhancing physician education, clarifying dosing guidelines, and optimizing workload management.
• Implementing antimicrobial stewardship programs is crucial for promoting appropriate antimicrobial use and reducing errors.