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Medication administration errors in an intensive care unit in Ethiopia

BACKGROUND: Medication administration errors in patient care have been shown to be frequent and serious. Such errors are particularly prevalent in highly technical specialties such as the intensive care unit (ICU). In Ethiopia, the prevalence of medication administration errors in the ICU is not stu...

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Autores principales: Agalu, Asrat, Ayele, Yemane, Bedada, Worku, Woldie, Mirkuzie
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2012
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3536604/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22559252
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1755-7682-5-15
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author Agalu, Asrat
Ayele, Yemane
Bedada, Worku
Woldie, Mirkuzie
author_facet Agalu, Asrat
Ayele, Yemane
Bedada, Worku
Woldie, Mirkuzie
author_sort Agalu, Asrat
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Medication administration errors in patient care have been shown to be frequent and serious. Such errors are particularly prevalent in highly technical specialties such as the intensive care unit (ICU). In Ethiopia, the prevalence of medication administration errors in the ICU is not studied. OBJECTIVE: To assess medication administration errors in the intensive care unit of Jimma University Specialized Hospital (JUSH), Southwest Ethiopia. METHODS: Prospective observation based cross-sectional study was conducted in the ICU of JUSH from February 7 to March 24, 2011. All medication interventions administered by the nurses to all patients admitted to the ICU during the study period were included in the study. Data were collected by directly observing drug administration by the nurses supplemented with review of medication charts. Data was edited, coded and entered in to SPSS for windows version 16.0. Descriptive statistics was used to measure the magnitude and type of the problem under study. RESULTS: Prevalence of medication administration errors in the ICU of JUSH was 621 (51.8%). Common administration errors were attributed to wrong timing (30.3%), omission due to unavailability (29.0%) and missed doses (18.3%) among others. Errors associated with antibiotics took the lion's share in medication administration errors (36.7%). CONCLUSION: Medication errors at the administration phase were highly prevalent in the ICU of Jimma University Specialized Hospital. Supervision to the nurses administering medications by more experienced ICU nurses or other relevant professionals in regular intervals is helpful in ensuring that medication errors don’t occur as frequently as observed in this study.
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spelling pubmed-35366042013-01-08 Medication administration errors in an intensive care unit in Ethiopia Agalu, Asrat Ayele, Yemane Bedada, Worku Woldie, Mirkuzie Int Arch Med Original Research BACKGROUND: Medication administration errors in patient care have been shown to be frequent and serious. Such errors are particularly prevalent in highly technical specialties such as the intensive care unit (ICU). In Ethiopia, the prevalence of medication administration errors in the ICU is not studied. OBJECTIVE: To assess medication administration errors in the intensive care unit of Jimma University Specialized Hospital (JUSH), Southwest Ethiopia. METHODS: Prospective observation based cross-sectional study was conducted in the ICU of JUSH from February 7 to March 24, 2011. All medication interventions administered by the nurses to all patients admitted to the ICU during the study period were included in the study. Data were collected by directly observing drug administration by the nurses supplemented with review of medication charts. Data was edited, coded and entered in to SPSS for windows version 16.0. Descriptive statistics was used to measure the magnitude and type of the problem under study. RESULTS: Prevalence of medication administration errors in the ICU of JUSH was 621 (51.8%). Common administration errors were attributed to wrong timing (30.3%), omission due to unavailability (29.0%) and missed doses (18.3%) among others. Errors associated with antibiotics took the lion's share in medication administration errors (36.7%). CONCLUSION: Medication errors at the administration phase were highly prevalent in the ICU of Jimma University Specialized Hospital. Supervision to the nurses administering medications by more experienced ICU nurses or other relevant professionals in regular intervals is helpful in ensuring that medication errors don’t occur as frequently as observed in this study. BioMed Central 2012-05-04 /pmc/articles/PMC3536604/ /pubmed/22559252 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1755-7682-5-15 Text en Copyright ©2012 Agalu et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Original Research
Agalu, Asrat
Ayele, Yemane
Bedada, Worku
Woldie, Mirkuzie
Medication administration errors in an intensive care unit in Ethiopia
title Medication administration errors in an intensive care unit in Ethiopia
title_full Medication administration errors in an intensive care unit in Ethiopia
title_fullStr Medication administration errors in an intensive care unit in Ethiopia
title_full_unstemmed Medication administration errors in an intensive care unit in Ethiopia
title_short Medication administration errors in an intensive care unit in Ethiopia
title_sort medication administration errors in an intensive care unit in ethiopia
topic Original Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3536604/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22559252
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1755-7682-5-15
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