Medication transcription errors in hospitalized patient settings: a consensual study in the Palestinian nursing practice

Abstract

Background: Medication transcription errors (MTEs) are frequent in hospitalized patient settings. Definitions and scenarios that represent potential MTEs in the Palestinian nursing practice were not previously approached using formal consensus techniques. This investigation was conducted to develop a consensual definition of MTEs and scenarios that represent different MTE situations by a panel of nurses and other healthcare professionals.Methods: In this observational study, consensus was sought using the Delphi technique. Panelists (n = 64) were invited and recruited from different hospitals in Palestine and a two-iterative rounds Delphi technique was used to achieve consensus on a proposed definition of MTEs and 76 different scenarios representing potential MTEs.Results: Consensus was achieve to accept the definition and to consider 69 of the 76 proposed scenarios (77.6%) as MTEs, exclude 3 scenarios (3.9%), and 4 scenarios (5.3%) remained equivocal. Equivocal scenarios might be considered as MTEs or not depending on the clinical situation. Conclusions:Consensus was achieved on a definition of MTEs and scenarios representing MTEs by a panel of nurses and other healthcare professionals. This study showed that it was possible to develop and achieve consensus on a definition and scenarios representing MTE situations using formal consensus techniques. Such consensual definitions could be useful in future epidemiological studies investigating MTEs. Using consensual definitions might reduce methodological variations, promote congruence in error counting and reporting, and permit comparing error rates in different hospital settings.

Development of Key Performance Indicators for Capturing Impact of Pharmaceutical Care in Palestinian Integrative Healthcare Facilities: A Delphi Consensus Study

“…is diversity might have added validity and strength to our method used in this study and to the suitability of using the developed KPIs as gold standards for developing KPIs to capture and measure the impact of pharmacists in providing care to patients admitted to or visiting healthcare facilities that employ integrative medicine do not exist. In the absence of a gold standard, formal consensus techniques provide suitable alternative methods to anecdotal and other subjective approaches [9,11,12,28,36,[45][46][47][48][49]54]. It is noteworthy mentioning that professionals are more likely to use consensus-based KPIs compared to KPIs either improvised or developed using anecdotal or subjective approaches.…”

“…We intentionally invited physicians, nurses, and risk/quality assurance managers to the panel to ensure the inclusion of other members of the healthcare provision team. e number of the panel members used in this study was informed by previous studies in which the Delphi technique was used in healthcare [9,11,12,28,35,36,[38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49]. However, there is no formal consensus on the size of panel members in the Delphi technique and panel members in previous studies ranged from 10 to 1,000 [50].…”

“…In this study, the definition of consensus was set a priori and was informed by previous studies that employed the Delphi technique [9,11,12,28,36,[45][46][47][48][49]51]. Results were analyzed as follows: (1) a decision was made to disregard and remove the activity or service from the final core list of KPIs when the median was in the range of 1-3 and the IQR was ≤2, (2) a decision was made to include the activity or service in the final core list of KPIs when the median was in the range of 7-9 and the IQR was ≤2, and (3) a decision could not be made whether to include or remove an activity of service from the final core list of KPIs when the median was in the range of 4-6 and/or the IQR was >2 and the decision remained equivocal.…”

The Practice and Perception of Hospital Pharmacists Towards Errors in Dispensing Medicines and Their Possible Causes in Omdurman Military Hospital, Sudan

“…1Before medication is supplied to patients; pharmacists detect 85% of errors 1 . Undetected errors may occur and may cause serious patient harm and may develop to death 9,12 . To safeguard the quality and safety of patient care by reviewing data on dispensing errors by pharmacists so that risk-reduction strategies are developed 1 .…”

“…13.2% prescribing and 19.1% administration error rate found in study to investigate incidence and type of prescribing and administration errors in pediatric patients in five United Kingdom hospitals. 6Possibility of errors in children compared to adult patients increased due to need to calculate doses according to the age, weight, and body surface area of children 8,9 . Ambiguous, incomplete, or confusing prescriptions may result in incorrectly understanding drug prescriptions which lead dispensing and administration problems of drugs 10,13 .…”