The prevalence and clinical seriousness of medication discrepancies identified upon hospital admission of pediatric patients.
BMC Health Serv Res
; 18(1): 966, 2018 Dec 14.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-30547782
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND:
Medication discrepancies are seen frequently in hospital setting upon admission or discharge. Medication Reconciliation service is a practice designed to ensure that patients' medications are ordered in a correct manner upon hospital admission, thus reducing the risk of having medication discrepancies. This study aimed to determine the prevalence of medication discrepancies and their clinical seriousness in pediatric patients at the time of hospital admission.METHODS:
A prevalence cross-sectional study was conducted at the pediatric departement at the Jordan University hospital between March-May 2018. During the study period, 100 pediatric patients were enrolled using a convenience sampling method. Patients' medical records were reviewed by two clinical pharmacist-reserachers to obtain patients' demographic, medical, and admission medication information. All parents were interviewed to obtain information regarding their children's Best Possible Medication History (BPMH). Following data collection, differences between patient's current admission medications and the BPMH were identified as medication discrepancies, and then they were classified into either undocumented intentional or unintentional discrepancies.RESULTS:
Among the 100 medication records reviewed, 13.0% (13 out of 100) contained at least one unintentional discrepancy, with the majority (n = 11, 84.6%) being classified to be associated with mild potential harm to patients. Of those discrepancies, 8 were omission of medications (61.5%) and 5 were addition of unnecessary medication (38.5%). On the other hand, 35.0% (35 out of 100) of medication records contained at least one intentional undocumented discrepancy.CONCLUSIONS:
This study revealed that unintentional medication discrepancies exist at the time of hospital admission for pediatric patients but with low proportion. The low proportion of medication discrepancies might be explained by the recent implementation of medication reconciliation service at the studied hospital. Also, intentional undocumented discrepancies were common, which may carry a potential harm to such vulnerable population at discharge. These data may inform the need for a strict policies to regulate medication documentation, thus decreasing the possibilities of medication errors.Palavras-chave
Texto completo:
1
Coleções:
01-internacional
Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Assunto principal:
Reconciliação de Medicamentos
/
Hospitalização
Tipo de estudo:
Observational_studies
/
Prevalence_studies
/
Prognostic_studies
/
Risk_factors_studies
Limite:
Child
/
Female
/
Humans
/
Male
País/Região como assunto:
Asia
Idioma:
En
Ano de publicação:
2018
Tipo de documento:
Article