الفهرس 
MEDICATION ERRORSOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
M
edicines play a pivotal role in the health care delivery system. Appropriate use of medicines is critical to ensure the provision of better medical care to patients, Medication errors (MEs) are preventable misadventures caused by inappropriate prescribing, transcribing, dispensing, or administration of medications, there is some evidence reporting the incidence and types of MEs during the COVID-19 pandemic. Nonetheless, MEs could occur at high rates for several reasons.
In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, our study aimed to investigate medication errors within an Egyptian central hospital.
The primary objectives were to calculate the incidence of these errors, identify their most common types, and discern potential risk factors contributing to their occurrence.
The current study is retrospective cohort study from records, conducted to measure the incidence of medication errors during COVID-19 pandemic during 4 months at an Egyptian central hospital, which has 12 general ward beds and 4 ICU beds. All medical records of patients admitted to the selected hospital during the second wave of COVID 19 pandemic and were isolated in the hospital during the period from First of January 2021 until the end of April 2021 were revised. The sample size was 395 patients with 873 errors. Two data collection sheets were used. A “patient personal and medical data sheet” including data about: age, sex, gender, allergies, hospital identification number, date of admission, date of discharge, comorbidity, admission route (ICU or ER), changing level of care during hospital stay (admitted to ICU or referred to general ward), condition on discharge (referred, improved, death), and other data related to severity of COVID 19 disease and “Clinical pharmacist’s data sheet”: including data about Type of medication error, action taken to correct the error and error severity and so on.
The research involved a sample of participants characterized by an almost equal percent of males and females, mean age of 60.7 years, and mean length of stay in the hospital of 5 days.
Our study yielded critical insights. First and foremost, it was strikingly evident that medication errors were alarmingly widespread, affecting all participants (100%), with incidence of MEs was found to be 39 errors per 100 bed days and 2 errors per patient. This finding underscores the urgency of addressing medication safety during pandemics, particularly when managing isolated COVID-19 patients. Notably, the most common types of medication errors were linked to dosing regimens (31%) and drug necessity (27%) and, shedding light on areas where targeted interventions are urgently needed.
Furthermore, this study established significant associations between increasing number of errors and certain risk factors: length of stay, changing level of care and the use of certain medications, such as antibiotics and corticosteroids.