Identification of enteral nutrition errors in a single-center quality-improvement audit

Enteral nutrition (EN) therapy is a multistep process including evaluation, prescription, procurement, dispensing, labeling, administration, and monitoring. EN therapy is prone to human errors, but these are poorly defined in the literature. The purpose of this study was to audit EN administration practices to quantify errors of execution and identify which components of the EN order were labeled, administered, or documented incorrectly.

On 2 nonconsecutive days, we identified all hospitalized patients with active EN orders and prospectively collected the following information: EN formula hanging/documented, formula hang time, infusion rate/documented rate (continuous EN), infused volume and documented schedule (intermittent EN), and EN modular documentation. Mismatches to the EN order were considered errors. We reviewed 1 month of hospital EN-related safety events for comparison.

Of 1045 data points collected from 160 patients, we identified 275 errors of execution: 135 labeling errors and 140 administration errors. The most common were hang time >48 h (85%), wrong number of modulars documented (48%), and wrong infusion rate (19%). We found one reported safety event (wrong formula delivered but not infused).

We identified a 15.9% error rate in EN order execution/documentation and 14% compliance with documentation of 48-h hang time. Errors (safety events) were grossly underreported. This highlighted several areas of opportunity to improve current EN use process, consistent with previous research on EN and oral nutrition supplement administration. Based on our findings, we plan to recommend implementation of EN barcoding at our institution, to model the familiar medication administration record.