Effectiveness of Development of Medication Errors Reporting System in Middle Size Hospital

Abstract

Background: The appropriate medication error reporting system can promote the accuracy of reports.

Objectives: To evaluate the effectiveness of the medication error reporting system after a renovation at the 50th Anniversary Mahavajiralongkorn Hospital.

Method: This action research compared the accuracy rate of medication error reports between a pre-renovative system between October 2019 and May 2020 and a post-renovative system between February 2021 and May 2021. The data was analyzed by descriptive statistics and compared the accuracy rate between pre- and post-renovation by inferential statistics independent Chi-squared test.

Results: The medication error reports during pre- and post-renovation were 624 and 611, respectively. Of these, the accuracy rate of medication error reporting increased from 84.94% to 92.80% (p-value < 0.001). The accuracy rate was further classified by domain of report and found to be increased in the domain of “types” (94.23% to 99.18%; p-value < 0.001), and “severity” (96.79% to 99.02%; p-value < 0.007). Whereas the “subject” domain had no significant difference (93.75% to 94.27%; p-value = 0.699). The accuracy rate of report by pharmacist was increased from 92.98% to 98.79% (p-value < 0.001), while this rate declined from 71.96% to 66.66% (p-value = 0.308) in the report by nurse but it was not statistically significant. Moreover, the accuracy rate of report after renovation of the system was higher during the office hours when compared with the out of office hours (93.79% vs. 86.25%; p-value = 0.015)

Conclusion: The renovation of medication error reporting system at the 50th Anniversary Mahavajiralongkorn Hospital can help in increasing the accuracy rate of report.