Patient Safety in the Process of Pharmacotherapy Carried Out by Nurses-A Polish-Slovak Prospective Observational Study.

Izabela Witczak,Mária Šupínová,Elena Janiczeková,Olga Fedorowicz,Agnieszka Młynarska,Piotr Pobrotyn,Łukasz Rypicz

doi:10.3390/ijerph181910066

Abstract

Pharmacotherapy, i.e., the use of medicines for combating a disease or its symptoms, is one of the crucial elements of patient care. Nursing workloads in the pharmacotherapy process prove that nurses spend 40% of their work on the management of medications. This study was aimed at the determination and comparison of safety levels at the nurse-managed stage of the pharmacotherapy process in Poland and Slovakia by identifying the key risk factors which directly affect patient safety. The study involved a group of 1774 nurses, of whom 1412 were from Poland and 362 were from Slovakia. The original Nursing Risk in Pharmacotherapy (acronym: NURIPH) tool was used. The survey questionnaire was made available online and distributed to nurses. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was 0.832. Nurses from Slovakia most often, i.e., for six out of nine factors (items: one, five, six, seven, eight, and nine), assessed the risk factors as “significant risk (3)”, and Polish nurses most often, i.e., for as many as eight out of nine risk factors (items: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and nine), assessed the risk factors as “very significant (5)”. It has been found that the safety of the pharmacotherapy process is assessed by Polish nurses to be much lower than by Slovak nurses.

Highlights

Patient safety is a relatively new research trend; it arouses great interest of researchers
The largest group of Polish nurses worked in medical treatment wards (27.8%), and most Slovak nurses worked in wards other than surgical and medical treatment wards (66.3%)
The mean score obtained in this case by Polish nurses was 3.62, and by Slovak nurses—3.54, which means that they assess this factor between “significant risk (3)” and “more significant risk (4)”

Summary

Introduction

Patient safety is a relatively new research trend; it arouses great interest of researchers. The World Health Organization (WHO), for nearly a decade, has undertaken numerous actions to promote patient safety, including the promotion of medication without harm. In 2020, the WHO declared their Flagship Initiative “A Decade of Patient Safety. The research area explored by the authors of this article proves immensely important, taking into account the scarcity of publications on the detailed analysis of risk factors in the pharmacotherapy process. Pharmacotherapy, i.e., the use of medicines for combating a disease or its symptoms, is one of the crucial elements of patient care. The administration of medications is of essential importance for patient safety, and medication administration errors (MAEs) are directly related to mortality and morbidity rates [1,2]. Studies on nursing workloads in the pharmacotherapy process prove that nurses spend 40% of their work on the management of medication [3]

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