Reduction of reconciliation errors in chronic pediatric patients through an educational strategy

Abstract

Medication reconciliation errors, also known as unintentional discrepancies, are frequent during admission, especially in chronic patients, and have an impact on safety. Educational interventions can be a reduction strategy. Quasi-experimental study, before-after design. Participants were chronic patients admitted into hospitalization services. Medication reconciliation was conducted at admission. The intervention consisted of a training to each prescribing physician with study contents and printed educational material. To study the association between intervention and change of frequency of unintentional discrepancies was made a logistic regression model, adjusting for selected variables. A sample of 54 patients was studied in each stage. In the first stage it was observed that 42.6% of patients had at least one unintentional discrepancy. After intervention the proportion of patients with at least one unintentional discrepancy decreased to 24.1% (p=0.041). In both stages, omission was the main category of unintentional discrepancy. The significant reduction after the intervention is maintained by controlling for variables such as emergency admission and pre-admission service. Incidence of unintentional discrepancies in admission is high in chronic hospitalized patients and can be reduced through an educative strategy.