Medication time out as a strategy for patient safety: reducing medication errors

• Autor(a) principal: Santos,Laís Lima
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Outros Autores: Camerini,Flávia Giron, Fassarella,Cíntia Silva, Almeida,Luana Ferreira de, Setta,Daniel Xavier de Brito, Radighieri,Adriana Raineri
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Revista Brasileira de Enfermagem (Online)
• Texto Completo: http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0034-71672021000100174
• topic: Patient Safety; Medication Errors; Risk Management; Strategies; Patient Care Team

ABSTRACT Objectives: to analyze the implementation of the medication time out strategy to reduce medication errors. Methods: this is a quantitative, cross-sectional, inferential study, with direct observation of the implementation of the medication time out strategy, carried out in a cardiac intensive care unit of a university hospital in Rio de Janeiro. Results: 234 prescriptions with 2,799 medications were observed. Of the prescriptions analyzed, 143 (61%) had at least one change with the use of the strategy. In the prescriptions altered, 290 medications had some type of change, and 104 (35.9%) changes were related to potentially harmful medication. During the application of the strategy, prescriptions with polypharmacy had 1.8 times greater chance of presenting an error (p-value = 0.031), which reinforces the importance of the strategy for prescriptions with multiple medications. Conclusions: the implementation of the medication time out strategy contributed to the interception of a high number of medication errors, using few human and material resources.