Medicines Reconciliation at an Intensive Care Unit
Overview
- Phase
- Not Applicable
- Intervention
- Not specified
- Conditions
- Medicines Reconciliation
- Sponsor
- University Hospital, Akershus
- Enrollment
- 50
- Locations
- 1
- Primary Endpoint
- Number of patients with at least one discrepancy between medications listed on hospital chart and medications used at home before hospital admittance
- Last Updated
- 8 years ago
Overview
Brief Summary
This study evaluates the effect of performing medicines reconciliation on patients admitted to an intensive care unit. Half of the patients will receive a medicines reconciliation at the intensive care unit. The other half will not. All included patients will receive medicines reconciliation after transfer to the ward.
Detailed Description
Transfer of patients from one level of care to another is known to increase the risk of medication errors. Medication reconciliation is an accepted intervention to increase the knowledge on the patients medication use, thus reducing the risk of avoidable medication errors. For patients in the intensive care unit treatment of the imminent threat is obviously the most important. Nevertheless, knowledge about previous medications are important.
Investigators
Silje Engdal Ørnes
Clinical pharmacist, Ph.d
University Hospital, Akershus
Eligibility Criteria
Inclusion Criteria
- •belonging to the hospitals intake area
- •written informed concent by the patient or his/her next to kin
Exclusion Criteria
- •Patients without next to kin
- •Not Norwegian speaking, in need of a translator
- •medication reconciliation performed earlier
- •Patients with Guillain-Barre or Myasthenia Gravis, due to long expectancy of stay
- •Short life expectancy, decided in cooperation with the physician
Outcomes
Primary Outcomes
Number of patients with at least one discrepancy between medications listed on hospital chart and medications used at home before hospital admittance
Time Frame: Medicines reconciliation is performed at randomisation and within 48 hours after transmission to the ward, assessed up to 28 days after randomisation
Medications listed on the medication chart were recorded on a predefined form, this included information on dosage form, strength, dosage and administration time for each drug. The pharmacist performed medicines reconciliation either by interviewing the patient or by gathering information from other sources as the patient's general practitioner, next-to-kin or if relevant nursing home. Any deviations between the information from the medication chart and information obtained during medicines reconciliation was defined as a discrepancy.
Secondary Outcomes
- Retrospective evaluation on the clinical relevance of the observed medical discrepancies(Retrospectively, based on the information gathered from the day of randomisation up until 28 days after randomisation)