A study of medication errors during the prescription stage in the pediatric critical care services of a secondary-tertiary level public hospital

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
	PEC	PICU	NICU	NIMCU	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 errors^b, n	139	190	31	19	379	30.3
Clinically relevant Prescription Error Rate^b %	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 Errors^a, n (%)
-Wrong speed rate of administration^b	45	102	31	14	192	15.3
-Abbreviations	258	432	85	83	858	68.5
Clinically relevant^b	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 units^b	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

ME Medication Error, NICU Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, NIMCU Neonatal Intermediate Special Care Unit, PEC Pediatric Emergency Care, PICU Pediatric Intensive Care Unit
^aAccording to the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) Spain (12); ^b The clinically relevant abbreviations were KCL (Potassium Chloride) and PHT (Phenytoin)

ISSN: 1471-2431