BENEFITS OF VOLUNTARY REPORTING OF MEDICATION ERRORS IN A HOSPITAL SETTING

Dalya Kamaleldin Abbasher*, Zakia Metwali, May BuAli, Esmaeil Hekal and Sundos Qassim

ABSTRACT

Context: Medication errors remain the most common type of medical incidents reported in hospitals. Reducing medication errors significantly improves patient safety and the quality use of medicines. Identification of medication error is a main target in improving clinical practice errors, in order to prevent adverse events. The major method for detecting medication errors and associated adverse drug-related events are computerized monitoring system for order entry and reporting medication errors, patient chart review, using direct observation, incident reporting and patient monitoring. Objective: To evaluate the impact of reporting medications errors on patient’s safety and required action plan for preventing reoccurrence. Method: It is a retrospective study. 1550 medication errors were collected and analyzed from government hospital in Abu-Dhabi for 2 years by using patient safety net (PSN). Results: The highest medication errors incidents were in quarter 4 2014 (20%) and declined to (7%) in quarter 4 2015. However some types of errors that were related to hospital system increased in 2015 like missing doses in inpatient pharmacy from 5% to 17.6%. While, all errors related to physician prescribing were dropped down from 89% in 2014 to 51.4% in 2015. Near miss an error occurred but did not reach the patient were the highest incidents among all categories, it was 95% in 2014 and slightly decreased to 88% in 2015. Event reached the patient, but no harm was evident was 3% in 2014 and slightly increased to 9% in 2015 while errors categories 4 to 9 were Zero for 2 years. Conclusion: Voluntary medication error reporting can provide useful information about systems contributing to errors, strategies for prevention, and evidence-based information about patient safety concepts. This information is important for hospitals to consider both when analysing medication errors and when implementing systems to improve safety.

Keywords: Reporting medication errors, patient safety, drug related adverse events, patient safety net and computerized monitoring system.