Table 2 Characteristics of MEs in the pediatric critical care services according to the updated classification by the Ruíz-Jarabo 2000 working group
Variables | Hospital pediatric critical care services | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
PEC | PICU | NICU | NIMCU | Total | ||
n | % | |||||
Total potential medication errors, n (%) | 358 (50.1) | 643 (63.5) | 141 (42.5) | 110 (38.3) | 1252 | 53.3 |
Total clinically relevant medication errorsb, n | 139 | 190 | 31 | 19 | 379 | 30.3 |
Clinically relevant Prescription Error Rateb % | 19.4 | 18.8 | 9.3 | 6.6 | 16.1 | |
Clinically relevant ME/patient Index | 1.6 | 2.9 | 0.5 | 0.2 | – | |
Types of Medication Errorsa, n (%) | ||||||
-Wrong speed rate of administrationb | 45 | 102 | 31 | 14 | 192 | 15.3 |
-Abbreviations | 258 | 432 | 85 | 83 | 858 | 68.5 |
Clinically relevantb | 65 | 42 | 0 | 5 | 112 | 13.1 |
Not clinically relevant | 193 | 390 | 85 | 78 | 746 | 86.9 |
-Spelling error | 26 | 63 | 25 | 13 | 127 | 10.1 |
-Misinterpretation/mistaken drug unitsb | 29 | 46 | 0 | 0 | 75 | 6.0 |
Patients with ideal medication orders, n (%) | 6 (6.8) | 0 (0.0) | 12 (17.6) | 26 (32.9) | 44 | 14.6 |
Prescriptions with ideal drugs, n (%) | 17 (2.4) | 146 (14.4) | 45 (13.5) | 66 (23.0) | 274 | 11.7 |