RECOGNITION AND PREVENTION OF MEDICATION ERRORS IN PEDIATRIC INPATIENTS: THE ROLE OF CLINICAL PHARMACISTS

Abstract

Introduction: Medication errors (MEs) are considered preventable errors that may occur frequently during the treatment process with or without patient harm in addition to their economic consequence. MEs occur during prescribing, dose calculation, dispensing, or administration of medicine which could be made by any healthcare professional as a physician, pharmacist or nurse, or by the patient himself. Objective: To detect and report MEs in pediatric inpatients’ medical records and potentially preventing these MEs by making recommendations/suggestions for healthcare professionals about the proper action needed to be taken. Methods: This was a prospective observational study, in which the medical records of admitted pediatric patients to Ibn Al-Atheer Teaching Hospital, Nineveh were reviewed to detect, report, and prevent MEs between the 1st of January and the 30th of June 2019. Results: Out of 6964 medical records reviewed by clinical pharmacists during the study period, 119 MEs were reported to healthcare professionals and prevented. 83% of detected MEs were dosing errors. The results of the Chi-square analysis showed that the highest percentage of dosing errors were associated with antibiotics (p=0.0493). Furthermore, the results of Chi-square analysis showed that the highest percentage of dosing errors were seen in infants and toddlers (p=0.011). Conclusion: This study highlighted the role of clinical pharmacists in recognizing, reporting and preventing MEs which are still occurring in every medical setting. Dosing errors were the most commonly occurring errors and antibiotics were the most frequent group of medicines involved in MEs.