Prospective, controlled interventional study to determine the benefit of a clinical pharmacist on a German intensive care unit
Not Applicable
- Conditions
- medication errors
- Registration Number
- DRKS00013184
- Lead Sponsor
- Gesundheit Nordhessen Holding AG
- Brief Summary
Not available
- Detailed Description
Not available
Recruitment & Eligibility
- Status
- Complete
- Sex
- All
- Target Recruitment
- 336
Inclusion Criteria
Patients aged 18 years and older were included in the study population if they stayed on the ICU for 24 hours or longer (work days only). If a discharged patient (that had not recieved any pharmaceutical care in the meantime) returned within 72 hours, the patient was still a part of the study population.
Exclusion Criteria
lack of documentation
- if less than 24h of the stay are documented in the patients’ medical records
- if more than 5% of the medical records are missing
patients only admitted for monitoring
palliative patients
Study & Design
- Study Type
- interventional
- Study Design
- Not specified
- Primary Outcome Measures
Name Time Method The primary outcome is the number of medication errors detected. <br>A medication error was defined as a deviation from the ideal medication process for the specific patient, which causes or could cause a preventable damage. DRP (drug related problem) detected by the clinical pharmacist are counted as medication errors (ME) if the chief or senior physician agrees. ME caused by nursing staff are excluded.<br>If the same medication error occurs for several days, it counts each day.<br>
- Secondary Outcome Measures
Name Time Method Secondary outcomes are the number of medication errors rated as potentially severe (if they could lead to organ damage, a prolongation of the length of stay, increased mortality or costs of more than 100€ per day), drug expanses ( with and without additional fees and new examination and treatment methods) (counting the storage before and after), staff salaries (documentation of the time needed by doctors and pharmacists), the number of monitored days without systemic anti-infective therapy and a fictitious length of stay. These data are colected from the patients' records.<br><br>The possibility of a discharge from the ICU was assessed using the criteria no more invasive mechanical ventilation needed and no need for neither catecholamines or alpha-2-agonists I.V. and no further reasons prohibiting a discharge.<br>The data is collected for the time of the patients' Intensive Care Unit stay.<br>