Abstract
The issue of patient safety is highly respected in recent years. Although there were much reports about how to improve patient safety, few discussion about medication-safety in pediatric patients. Accordingly, pediatric patients suffered from more adverse drug events and harms easily in medical malpractice than adults. Usually, dosage adjustment by physician is necessary in pediatric medication. However, medication error often happens when calculated about drug dosage. Pediatric patients, especially who visit emergency room (ER) are more valuable to medication error, due to lack of standardized dosage of pediatric medication. Much medical malpractice in pediatric drugs was announced recently. The reason is that there is no drug-dosage information system designed for pediatrics. Pediatric patients suffered from more adverse drug events and harms than adults. The aim of this study was to collect the category of common medication error in pediatric patients, and to build a drug-dosage decision support System. Then we applied it to improve patient safety in pediatric emergency department by reducing the incidence of dosage errors.
This study was performed in an emergency unit in a medical center in North Taiwan. Initially, by literature review and a professional conference we collected the drugs most common prone to ME (Medication Error) in the pediatric emergency care setting. Next, we collected these drugs' information about therapeutic indications, dosage, administration, maximum dose. After arranging and categorizing these drugs' information, we created an electronic database for pediatric dosage in emergency room. Subsequently, a weight-based pediatric dosage decision support system was designed on web interface to support the pediatric emergency care professionals (ex. physicians, pharmacists and nurses) prescribing or re-checking the dosage. Finally, the effect of system was evaluated by the investigation analysis by emergency care staffs.
In results, there are the most common prescribed in the emergency department and prone to medication error selected and made the rules of dose calculation in this study. All the emergency staffs who involve in this study agreed that this system is beneficial to prescribe or re-check the pediatric dosage. This system was evaluated by 20 clinical professionals for its usage and 97.1% users satisfied with it. Moreover, over 98% decisions provided by this system were evaluated as correct and acceptable. We hope that the healthcare professionals could spend less time to calculate the dosage and get more correct recommend dosage and reduce medication error by this pediatric dosage decision support system in the future.
This study was performed in an emergency unit in a medical center in North Taiwan. Initially, by literature review and a professional conference we collected the drugs most common prone to ME (Medication Error) in the pediatric emergency care setting. Next, we collected these drugs' information about therapeutic indications, dosage, administration, maximum dose. After arranging and categorizing these drugs' information, we created an electronic database for pediatric dosage in emergency room. Subsequently, a weight-based pediatric dosage decision support system was designed on web interface to support the pediatric emergency care professionals (ex. physicians, pharmacists and nurses) prescribing or re-checking the dosage. Finally, the effect of system was evaluated by the investigation analysis by emergency care staffs.
In results, there are the most common prescribed in the emergency department and prone to medication error selected and made the rules of dose calculation in this study. All the emergency staffs who involve in this study agreed that this system is beneficial to prescribe or re-check the pediatric dosage. This system was evaluated by 20 clinical professionals for its usage and 97.1% users satisfied with it. Moreover, over 98% decisions provided by this system were evaluated as correct and acceptable. We hope that the healthcare professionals could spend less time to calculate the dosage and get more correct recommend dosage and reduce medication error by this pediatric dosage decision support system in the future.
Translated title of the contribution | Establishment of a Drug-dosage Decision Supporting System to Improve Drug-safety in Pediatric Emergency Department |
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Original language | Chinese (Traditional) |
Pages (from-to) | 1-18 |
Number of pages | 18 |
Journal | 醫療資訊雜誌 |
Volume | 19 |
Issue number | 2 |
Publication status | Published - 2010 |