Evaluation of medication errors in pediatric patients using antibiotics

English (OpenAlex)

BACKGROUND: Medication errors are frequently seen in pediatric patients. Medication error studies on pediatric cases were found to not only be limited but also the collaboration of clinical pharmacists and physicians on this topic was not published in Turkey. This study aimed to identify drug-related problems, especially in antibiotics. METHODS: This study was a point prevalence study with pediatric inpatients that used at least one antibiotic at a pediatric tertiary care reference hospital on November 16, 2016. Medications of patients were evaluated by clinical pharmacists in terms of drug-related problems and by physicians in terms of correct indications. RESULTS: Eighty-nine hospitalized patients were using antibiotics at the time of the study. The median age was 42 months (range: 1-226 months), and 49 (55.1%) of the patients were male. Clinical pharmacists detected a total of 210 potential drug-drug interactions in 46 (51.7%) patients. Approximately 48.5% of the patients in pediatric wards and 52.4% of the patients in surgical wards had at least one potential drug-drug interaction. A total of 39 medication errors were identified in 36 patients` drug orders. Most of the errors (51.3%) were due to dosing and administration time errors (35.9%). The number of errors per patient in surgical services was higher (0.47) than the pediatric services (0.42). Forty-three percent of errors were antimicrobial-related, and 70.5% of them were classified as dosing errors. CONCLUSIONS: Evaluation of patients` drug usage by a clinical pharmacist in terms of drug-related problems such as drug interactions, side effects and prescribing errors leads to better pharmaceutical care.