[Quality of medication storage on hospital wards]. / Qualité du stockage des médicaments dans les unités de soins.

In order to meet regulations and limit the risks for patients, the quality of medication storage on hospital wards requires practical actions. They concern mainly the management of the emergency medication cabinets, conditions regarding supply and cold storage under controlled temperatures. Failures in the system may result in nurses carrying out risky procedures.

Severe bleeding secondary to misuse of fondaparinux: a case report.

Venous thromboembolism (VTE) remains a great challenge because of its frequency and of its potential severity. However, VTE treatment can also lead to iatrogenic complications. We report a case of thigh haematoma by a 83-year-old woman under fondaparinux for a solear thrombosis. Then we discuss the indications of Unfractionated Heparin (UFH), Low-Molecular-Weight Heparins (LMWH) and Fondaparinux, which are the three classes of rapidly acting anticoagulant treatments nowadays available. As their efficacy is comparable, the choice between these classes relies on the risk of adverse effects, which depends on some patient's characteristics. LMWH and fondaparinux are contra-indicated by the patients with a renal clearance under 30 ml/min. Only UFH are authorized during the whole pregnancy even though LMWH are more and more used. Fondaparinux has proven its safety by patients over 100 kg. UFH requires a daily biological management whereas it is optional for LMWH and fondaparinux, as long as their contra-indications are taken into account. No Heparin-induced-thrombocytopenia Syndrome (HIT-Sd) has been proven yet under fondaparinux so that platelets management seems not necessary, contrary to UFH and LMWH which require a twice-weekly platelets count. The accuracy of the therapeutic indication should result in the best benefit/risk assessment.

Medication dispensing errors in a French military hospital pharmacy.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the rate and the primary types of medication dispensing errors detected by pharmacists during implementation of a unit dose drug dispensing system. SETTING: The central pharmacy at the Percy French military hospital (France). METHOD: The check of the unit dose medication cassettes was performed by pharmacists to identify dispensing errors before delivering to the care units. From April 2006 to December 2006, detected errors were corrected and recorded into seven categories: unauthorized drug, wrong dosage-form, improper dose, omission, wrong time, deteriorated drug, and wrong patient errors. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: Dispensing error rate, calculated by dividing the total of detected errors by the total of filled and omitted doses; classification of recorded dispensing errors. RESULTS: During the study, 9,719 unit dose medication cassettes were filled by pharmacy technicians. Pharmacists detected 706 errors for a total of 88,609 filled and omitted unit doses. An overall error rate of 0.80% was found. There were approximately 0.07 detected dispensing errors per medication cassette. The most common error types were improper dose errors (n = 265, 37.5%) and omission errors (n = 186, 26.3%). Many causes may probably explain the occurrence of dispensing errors, including communication failures, problems related to drug labeling or packaging, distractions, interruptions, heavy workload, and difficulties in reading handwriting prescriptions. CONCLUSION: The results showed that a wide range of errors occurred during the dispensing process. A check performed after the initial medication selection is also necessary to detect and correct dispensing errors. In order to decrease the occurrence of dispensing errors, some practical measures have been implemented in the central pharmacy. But because some dispensing errors may remain undetected, there is a requirement to develop other strategies that reduce or eliminate these errors. The pharmacy staff is widely involved in this duty.

[Drug use process and nurses practices: evaluation in a French military hospital in 2006]. / Circuit du médicament et pratiques infirmières: evaluation dans un hôpital des armées en 2006.

The study carried out at Percy hospital (Clamart, France) gives a description of nurses' practices for each stage of the drug use process. Their knowledge about drugs risk was also evaluated. Results of this background give an assessment of practices before hospital accreditation and will be used to define the priority actions of improvement. Recent implementation of unit dose drug dispensing system and simplification of adverse drug event report illustrate these actions to enhance safety and to decrease iatrogenic risk. In addition, pharmacists proposed a training for nurses about drug iatrogenic disease.