Medication errors in a neonatal unit

INTRODUCTION: Medication errors occur as a result of human mistakes or system flaws and could be prevented by studying and modifying the conditions that predispose to errors. In recent years, interest in medical errors has increased because of their health and economic implications. OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the frequency and types of prescribing errors in the Neonatology Unit of the Hospital 12 Octubre before and after an intervention to raise awareness of errors among the medical staff by comparing the frequency of error before and after the intervention. PATIENTS AND METHODS: We conducted a prospective pilot study in two phases. In the first phase, we studied prescribing errors by reviewing 100 prescriptions for newborns admitted to the Intensive or Intermediate Care Units. When the prescriptions were written, the neonatologists were unaware that the study would be performed. Legibility, dose, units used to express medications, route of administration, use of abbreviations, specification of dosage per kilogram of body weight and use of brand names were evaluated. The information was analyzed and an information-training intervention was performed in which the results were made known in a clinical session and recommendations for improving prescriptions were made. In the second phase, another 100 prescriptions were reviewed. The results were compared with those obtained before the intervention using the chi-squared test. RESULTS: In the first phase, 22 % of prescriptions were illegible or doubtful, 4 % contained dose errors and 28 % did not specify the route of administration. After the intervention, 8 % (p 0.005) of prescriptions were illegible, 4 % contained dose errors and 5 % (p 0.0001) did not specify the route of administration. Regarding other quality markers, the percentage of prescriptions specifying dosage per kilogram of body weight increased from 46 % to 78 %. Brand names were used in 21 %. Units were always expressed in abbreviations. All errors were severity index 0 or 1. CONCLUSIONS: The first step in prevention is recognition of mistakes. Increasing awareness among the medical staff of the consequences of errors improved the quality of prescriptions in our department. Awareness of the frequency and type of errors is the first step towards implementing strategies to reduce iatrogeny.