Medicine preparation errors in ten Spanish neonatal intensive care units

This study assessed the rate of errors in intravenous medicine preparation at the bedside in neonatal intensive care units vs the preparation error rate in a hospital pharmacy service. We conducted a prospective observational study between June and September 2013. Ten Spanish neonatal intensive care units and one hospital pharmacy service participated in the study. Two types of preparation errors were considered: calculation errors and accuracy errors. A total of 522 samples were collected: 238 of vancomycin, 139 of gentamicin, 39 of phenobarbital and 88 of caffeine citrate preparations. Of these, 444 samples were collected by nurses in neonatal intensive care units, and 60 were provided by the hospital pharmacy service. Overall, 18 samples were excluded from the analysis. We detected calculation errors in 6/444 (1.35 %) and accuracy errors in 243/444 (54.7 %) samples from the neonatal intensive care units. In contrast, in samples from the hospital pharmacy service, no calculation errors were detected, but there were accuracy errors in 23/60 (38.3 %) samples.