Medication-administration errors in an urban mental health hospital: a direct observation study.

In the present study, we aimed to identify the incidence, type, and potential clinical consequence of medication-administration errors made in a mental health hospital, and to investigate factors that might increase the risk of error. A prospective, direct observational technique was used to collect data from nurse medication rounds on each of the hospital's 43 inpatient wards. Regression analysis was used to identify potential error predictors. During the 172 medication rounds observed, 139 errors were detected in 4177 (3.3%) opportunities. The most common error was incorrect dose omission (52/139, 37%). Other common errors included incorrect dose (25/139, 18%), incorrect form (16/139, 12%), and incorrect time (12/139, 9%). Fifteen (11%) of the errors were of serious clinical severity; the rest were of negligible or minor severity. Factors that increased the risk of error included the nurse interrupting the medication round to attend to another activity, an increased number of 'when required' doses of medication administered, a higher number of patients on the ward, and an increased number of doses of medication due. These findings suggest that providers of inpatient mental health-care services should adopt medicine-administration systems that minimize task interruption and the use of 'when required' medication, as well as taking steps to reduce nursing workload.

Using league tables to reduce missed dose medication errors on mental healthcare of older people wards.

The unintentional omission of medication is one of the most commonly-reported administration errors on hospital wards throughout the world. The omission of a dose of medication can severely harm the patient affected, but to date there is limited evidence about cost-effective means for reducing the incidence of such errors. The current report describes a quality improvement project, conducted on the mental healthcare of older people (MHCOP) wards in East London NHS Foundation Trust, which led to a greater than 90% reduction in the rate of unintentionally omitted doses of medication. The project involved the publication of a fortnightly league table which ranked each of the wards by how many doses they had missed, with the ward missing the fewest doses receiving a prize. PDSA cycles were used to refine the concept, with the final incarnation of the fortnightly league table also incorporating the publication of a poster for each ward which showed how many weeks it had been since the ward missed a dose, and the ward's overall trend in missed doses. The project has resulted in the average missed dose rate on the MCHOP wards decreasing from 1.07% to 0.07%. In real terms, this represents a reduction from an estimated 2878 to 188 missed doses per year on the six MHCOP wards. By greatly reducing the risk of patients experiencing adverse drug events as a result of missed doses, this project has given rise to a potential cost-saving of around £34,000 per year across the wards studied. The use of league tables represents a simple, cost-effective means of tackling the problem of doses of medication being unintentionally omitted on hospital wards.

Improving the safety and efficiency of nurse medication rounds through the introduction of an automated dispensing cabinet.

Information technology (IT) systems are being utilised with increasing frequency at the prescribing and dispensing stage of the medicines-use process in UK hospitals. However, much less development has taken place with regard to the implementation of IT systems at the administration stage of medicines-use. A technology that has been implemented widely at the administration stage in North American hospitals is the automated dispensing cabinet (ADC), which has been shown to reduce nurse medication administration errors and reduce the time that nurses spend administering medication. The current project was undertaken to assess whether these benefits would be realised with the introduction of an ADC on an inpatient ward in a UK mental health hospital. Nurses were observed administering medication before and after the implementation of an ADC on a ward at East London NHS Foundation Trust (ELFT). The findings from these observations showed that the use of the ADC led to a reduction in the medication administration error rate from 8.9% to 7.2%; however, this reduction was solely accounted for by a reduction in errors of negligible clinical severity. The types of administration errors noted after implementation of the ADC remained largely unchanged from beforehand. The ADC was found to reduce the amount of time that nurses spent administering medication from 2.94 min per dose to 2.37 min per dose. It is estimated that this reduction could generate around 66 min of additional free nursing time per ward per day. As a standalone device, the ADC was found to improve the efficiency of the medicines-use process, but had little meaningful effect on medication administration error rate at ELFT. However, it could be anticipated that additional benefit with regard to reducing medication administration errors may be demonstrated if the ADC was used in combination with other IT systems, such as electronic prescribing.