Relevamiento del proceso de medicación en un Hospital General de Agudos

Abstract

Introduction: The medication process is the set of activities carried out by different professionals to ensure that every medication reaches the patient in optimal conditions. At HIGA Alende, nursing staff transcribes the orders onto "cardboard cards" which are individual for each patient and for each drug. Patient safety has acquired increasing relevance, and this is the reason that inspired us to conduct this study.

Objectives: To define a unanimous dispensing circuit throughout the hospital; to quantify the discrepancies between the medical prescription (MP) and the nursing transcription; to relate the quantity of discrepancies as a function of the number of prescribed medications; and to classify the discrepancies according to the degree of severity.

Materials and Methods: Prospective, observational, and cross-sectional study. The observed discrepancies were analyzed. The types of errors were categorized according to the degree of severity.

Results: Out of a total of 40 samples corresponding to 850 patients, 189 (22.2%) presented a discrepancy in the transcription and 91 (10.7%) showed two or more. The main difference was the omission of medication on the card (37.7%). For 22 patients, 56.3% significant errors and 4.4% serious errors were obtained.

Discussion: We have detected differences between the MP and the transcription in more than 30% of the patients analyzed.

Conclusion: The MP constitutes the central axis of communication among the medical team, pharmacy, and nursing staff, making it essential to establish a standardized, clear, and concise format that is uniformly applied throughout the institution.