Browsing by Subject "lääkitystietojen hallintaprosessi"

Medication safety is safety related to the use of medicines. Medication errors are drug treatment related events which can lead to medication safety incidents. Medication process is multi-professional teamwork which contains a risk of medication error on every step. It is important to identify potential safety risks in order to prevent the risk events. Medication errors can occur for example during the transfer of the prescription information in to the medication list. It is important that medication lists are accurate and up to date so that patient's medication therapy is optimal. The aim of this study was to assess whether the primary health care medication lists are up to date, accurate and easy to read. The aim was also to identify what kind of information in medication lists was open to interpretation. In one of the municipalities, the medication lists at home were compared to the medication lists at primary care to see whether both lists had identical information on the medication. The data of this study consisted of 240 medication lists from primary care units in three Finnish municipalities. The lists contained altogether 3062 medications. Most of the lists were printed from the patient information systems. Some of the lists were copied from the home medication lists. All medication lists were systematically reviewed and issues open to interpretation were documented in a structured Microsoft Excel table. The data were transferred to SPSS 20 Program for statistical analysis. Most (73%, n=174) of the medication lists (n=240) were incomplete. One-fifth (n=612) of the medications in use (n=3062) contained missing information on medicines. The total number of discrepancies was 807 (mean 3.4 discrepancies per medication list). The most common discrepancies were related to the time of administration (n=277) and dosages (n=241). Duplicate medications included a lot of confusing information. Discontinued medications were not always clearly marked. In only one of the municipalities the medication lists had a space for marking the indication. There were some differences between home medication lists (n=62) and primary care medication lists. ™ Based on this study medication lists have a lot of discrepancies and ambiguities in their information content. The medication lists do not always accurately tell the patient's current medication. Interpretation of inaccurate medication lists consumes unnecessarily doctors' and nursing staff's time. Inaccurate medication lists are a risk to patient safety. It is also important that the medication lists would be similar in all health care units. Electronic prescriptions, the National Health Archive and medication list developed by Information Management Service of Healthcare are expected to solve at least some of the problems related to medication lists.