Decreasing Unintended Medication Discrepancies in Medication Reconciliation through Simple Yet Effective Interventions

Autor: Thomas Simunich, Hassan Tahir, Muhammad Umair Malik, Nagadarshini Ramagiri Vinod, Nikath Zeeshan, Lavanya Vuppu, Vistasp Daruwalla, Medha Joshi
Rok vydání: 2017
Předmět:
Zdroj: American Journal of Public Health Research. 5:30-35
ISSN: 2327-669X
DOI: 10.12691/ajphr-5-2-1
Popis: Background: Medication reconciliation is the process of comparing a patient's medication orders to all of the medications that the patient has been taking. Unfortunately, medication errors are common in our health system accounting for significant proportion of patient harm. The main objective of our study was to explore the effect of self-designed intervention in improving the accuracy of patient current medication list in the outpatient settings. Methods: The study designed entailed collection of data from October 2013 to March 2014. The data collected in October (The pre-intervention) was compared to the post-intervention data in March 2014. Following interventions were performed: Education of residents, nurses and patients, frequent reminders to the residents to perform medication reconciliation, sending notifications to the residents who failed to perform medication reconciliation, reminding the patients get all refills at the time of appointment and reminding the patients to bring pill bottles at each appointment. The pre-intervention data was compared with the post-intervention data for different types of medication errors. Normality of the variables was pre assessed. Non-parametric analysis using Fisher’s exact test was performed for comparison of categorical variables. Conclusion: In conclusion, our intervention improved the accuracy of patient current medication list in the electronic records as accurate as possible. For clinics and hospitals, medication reconciliation can enhance delivery of high value cost conscious care to the patients by reducing medication errors.
Databáze: OpenAIRE