(October 9, 2009 - Insidermedicine)

The majority of residents in care home settings have been exposed to medication errors, usually more than one, according to research published in Quality and Safety in Health Care.

Here are some strategies for preventing medical errors from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality:

•    Institute use of information technology, such as hand-held bedside computers, for ordering medications and treatments

•    Avoid similar-sounding and look-alike names and packages of medications

•    Standardize treatment policies and protocols within an institution or office to avoid confusion and reliance on memory

Researchers out of the University of London prospectively followed a random sample of 256 residents from 55 care homes in the United Kingdom. Medication errors among these residents were identified by interviewing the residents themselves as well as by reviewing their records, observing practices, and examining dispensed items. Causes of errors were identified by observation and by theoretically-framed interviews with home staff, physicians, and pharmacists. Experts scored the potential harm of each error on a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 meant "no harm" and 10 meant "death",

Residents were taking a mean of 8.0 medicines each. Among these participants 69.5% had one or more medication errors, and the mean number of errors per resident was 1.9. Errors related to prescribing, monitoring, administering, and dispensing of medication. The mean potential for harm score ranged from 2.0 to 3.7 for each type of error. The most common contributing factors to errors were physicians who were inaccessible or unfamiliar with the home or resident, overworked staff, lack of training, drug round interruptions, lack of teamwork, inefficient ordering systems, inaccurate medicine records, reliance on verbal communication., and difficult to fill (and check) medication administration systems.

Today's research uncovers an alarmingly high rate of medical errors in the care home setting and calls for measures to be taken to improve this error rate.