Medication errors are common and significant causes of preventable harm, particularly for hospitalized children, in whom medication errors are 3 times more common than in adults.1 Children are more prone to medication errors and resulting harm for several reasons. First, pediatric weight-based dosing requires use of nonstandard medication preparations that are subject to miscalculations in prescribing, dispensing, and administration processes. Second, immature metabolic systems are less tolerant of medication errors. Finally, children may be unable to communicate regarding the symptoms of an adverse drug event (ADE).2 Estimates of the frequency of harmful medication errors or ADEs range from 13.4 to 49.8 per 1000 patient-days.3 and 4
In the fall of 2008, Nationwide Children's Hospital (NCH) set a goal of eliminating preventable patient harm. A key metric in monitoring the success of the safety program was the Preventable Harm Index.5 At that time, medication errors accounted for nearly two-thirds of preventable patient harm, with more than 50% of those errors related to medication administration and smaller percentages related to prescribing and dispensing processes. The most common administration errors involved failure to perform the “5 rights of medication administration.”6 One-half of the preventable medication errors occurred in the critical care units; thus, the initial ADE reduction effort focused on medication administration errors in the critical care units. Eventually the other medication management processes were addressed, and the improvement effort spread throughout the hospital system.
Methods
Medications errors are mistakes in the prescribing, dispensing, administration, or monitoring of medications. ADEs, as defined here, are preventable medication errors that reach the patient and cause some degree of harm. Potential ADEs are medication errors in which prevention strategies (eg, pharmacist interventions with prescribers) prevent the error from reaching the patient.