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[Reduction of prescription error and its adverse effects in the pediatric intensive care area]
Ana Fajreldines1, Antonela Pauluzzi2, Silvio Torres3
1Departamento de Calidad y Seguridad, Hospital Alemán, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Insights
Multidisciplinary rounds significantly reduced prescription errors in a pediatric intensive care unit, from 12% to 0%. While adverse drug events saw a slight decrease, the primary impact was on prescription accuracy.
Area of Science:
- Pediatric Intensive Care
- Medication Safety
- Clinical Pharmacy
Context:
- Medication errors are common in prescriptions, impacting patient safety.
- Pediatric intensive care units (PICUs) require stringent medication management.
- Multidisciplinary rounds are an intervention strategy to improve care coordination.
Purpose:
- To evaluate the impact of multidisciplinary rounds on prescription errors.
- To assess the effect of this intervention on adverse drug events (ADEs) in a PICU.
- To analyze prescription data before and after implementing the intervention.
Summary:
- An uncontrolled before-and-after study analyzed 200 pediatric patients (100 before, 100 after).
- Prescription errors decreased from 12% to 0% (p=0.001) post-intervention.
- Adverse drug events reduced from 45 to 38 per 100 admissions, though not statistically significant (p>0.05).
Impact:
- Multidisciplinary rounds effectively reduced prescription errors in the studied PICU population.
- This intervention demonstrates a potential strategy for enhancing medication safety in pediatric critical care.
- Further research may explore optimizing multidisciplinary rounds to also impact ADEs.
Introduction:
Prescription is the node of medication management and use that most frequently presents medication errors, according to various studies. This study aims to analyze prescriptions before and after the incorporation of a multidisciplinary round in the pediatric intensive care area and its implication in the occurrence of adverse drug events.
Methods:
This is an uncontrolled before and after study.
Results:
100 patients were studied before and 100 after, range 1-17 years, mean age: 6.4 SD: 8.7. 55.5% (n = 111) were men. A prescription error was detected before the intervention of 12% (n = 12) and after 0% of the intervention, 0%, p = 0.001. A total of 45 adverse events were detected, that is, 45 adverse events per 100 admissions and 38, that is, 38 events per 100 admissions, before and after the intervention respectively (p > 0.05).
Conclusion:
The intervention was useful to reduce prescription error in this sample of patients.
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