To assess the nature of common medication errors, ECRI Institute asked participating organizations in its PSO to submit medication events over a five-week period. Participating organizations submitted nearly 700 medication events from April 15, 2011 to May 20, 2011. An analysis of these errors showed a majority of errors occurred during the administration stage of the medication process. Of 320 administration errors, more than one third (36.9 percent) involved intravenous errors.
In response, ECRI PSO compiled a list of strategies to help healthcare providers reduce the risk of medication administration, including IV infusions:
• Adopt infusion pumps with dose error reduction systems.
• Standardize infusion pumps in the organization to maintain high user familiarity.
• Limit the number of concentrations available for infusion solutions.
• Require pharmacy preparation of IV solutions and limit nurse preparation of IV solutions to emergency situations.
The PSO also suggested system-based strategies to improve medication safety, such as leadership support, evaluation of medication administration, risk assessment and more.
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