title: Association of medication errors with drug classifications, clinical units, and consequence of errors: Are they related?
abstract: Registered nurses (RNs) play an important role in safe medication administration and patient safety. This study examined a total of 1276 medication error (ME) incident reports made by RNs in hospital inpatient settings in the southwestern region of the United States. The most common drug class associated with MEs was cardiovascular drugs (24.7%). Among this class, anticoagulants had the most errors (11.3%). The antimicrobials was the second most common drug class associated with errors (19.1%) and vancomycin was the most common antimicrobial that caused errors in this category (6.1%). MEs occurred more frequently in the medical-surgical and intensive care units than any other hospital units. Ten percent of MEs reached the patients with harm and 11% reached the patients with increased monitoring. Understanding the contributing factors related to MEs, addressing and eliminating risk of errors across hospital units, and providing education and resources for nurses may help reduce MEs.
authors.affiliation: Department of Health Care Administration and Policy, School of Community Health Sciences, University of Nevada Las Vegas, 4505 S. Maryland Parkway, Box 453023, Las Vegas, NV 89154-3023, United States. Electronic address: muroi@unlv.nevada.edu.
authors.forename: Maki
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Muroi
authors.affiliation: Department of Health Care Administration and Policy, School of Community Health Sciences, University of Nevada Las Vegas, 4505 S. Maryland Parkway, Box 453023, Las Vegas, NV 89154-3023, United States. Electronic address: jay.shen@unlv.edu.
authors.forename: Jay J
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Shen
authors.affiliation: School of Nursing, University of Nevada Las Vegas, United States.
authors.forename: Alona
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Angosta
mesh_terms: D006757:Hospital Units; D006801:Humans; D008508:Medication Errors; D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations / Q000145:classification*; D015206:Southwestern United States
chemical_list: D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations
keywords: Drug class; Hospital; Medication error