Author
Listed:
- CJ Cabilan
- James A Hughes
- Carl Shannon
Abstract
Aims and objectives To describe the contextual, modal and psychological classification of medication errors in the emergency department to know the factors associated with the reported medication errors. Background The causes of medication errors are unique in every clinical setting; hence, error minimisation strategies are not always effective. For this reason, it is fundamental to understand the causes specific to the emergency department so that targeted strategies can be implemented. Design Retrospective analysis of reported medication errors in the emergency department. Methods All voluntarily staff‐reported medication‐related incidents from 2010–2015 from the hospital's electronic incident management system were retrieved for analysis. Contextual classification involved the time, place and the type of medications involved. Modal classification pertained to the stage and issue (e.g. wrong medication, wrong patient). Psychological classification categorised the errors in planning (knowledge‐based and rule‐based errors) and skill (slips and lapses). Results There were 405 errors reported. Most errors occurred in the acute care area, short‐stay unit and resuscitation area, during the busiest shifts (0800–1559, 1600–2259). Half of the errors involved high‐alert medications. Many of the errors occurred during administration (62·7%), prescribing (28·6%) and commonly during both stages (18·5%). Wrong dose, wrong medication and omission were the issues that dominated. Knowledge‐based errors characterised the errors that occurred in prescribing and administration. The highest proportion of slips (79·5%) and lapses (76·1%) occurred during medication administration. It is likely that some of the errors occurred due to the lack of adherence to safety protocols. Conclusion Technology such as computerised prescribing, barcode medication administration and reminder systems could potentially decrease the medication errors in the emergency department. There was a possibility that some of the errors could be prevented if safety protocols were adhered to, which highlights the need to also address clinicians’ attitudes towards safety. Relevance to clinical practice Technology can be implemented to help minimise errors in the ED, but this must be coupled with efforts to enhance the culture of safety.
Suggested Citation
CJ Cabilan & James A Hughes & Carl Shannon, 2017.
"The use of a contextual, modal and psychological classification of medication errors in the emergency department: a retrospective descriptive study,"
Journal of Clinical Nursing, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 26(23-24), pages 4335-4343, December.
Handle:
RePEc:wly:jocnur:v:26:y:2017:i:23-24:p:4335-4343
DOI: 10.1111/jocn.13760
Download full text from publisher
Corrections
All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:jocnur:v:26:y:2017:i:23-24:p:4335-4343. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1111/(ISSN)1365-2702 .
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through
the various RePEc services.