Profiling harmful medication errors in an acute Irish teaching hospital.

BACKGROUND Medication error reporting systems in hospitals are faced with the challenge of processing vast numbers of reports which identify a myriad of safety issues. With such large volumes of data and limited resources it makes sense to adopt a prioritisation approach. Several published studies have focused solely on the subset of errors which cause patient harm. The majority of such research has concerned the individual analysis of criteria associated with medication errors. However, the research described here used an alternative approach which involved linking the three criteria of medication class, patient outcome, and type of error, in order to describe the medication-related scenarios presenting greatest risk to the organisation. AIMS To identify the highest-priority medication-related risks in an acute teaching hospital. To profile harmful medication errors submitted to a voluntary reporting system in a tertiary healthcare setting in Ireland. METHODS A database of medication errors, reported via an internal voluntary reporting system over a 5-year period, was analysed. The criteria of medication class, patient outcome and type of error were analysed separately and then cross-tabulated. RESULTS The medication classes, error types and adverse patient outcomes most frequently associated with harm were identified. The cross-tabulation highlighted ten priority risk areas which accounted for the majority of patient harm. CONCLUSIONS A cross-tabulation strategy for prioritising medication-associated risks was successfully applied to a hospital database comprising medication errors. The profile developed for harmful medication errors in this acute tertiary healthcare setting was broadly in line with that published for error reporting systems internationally.