Table 2.
Characteristics of MEs in the pediatric critical care services according to the updated classification by the Ruíz-Jarabo 2000 working group
| Variables | Hospital pediatric critical care services | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PEC | PICU | NICU | NIMCU | Total | ||
| n | % | |||||
| Total potential medication errors, n (%) | 358 (50.1) | 643 (63.5) | 141 (42.5) | 110 (38.3) | 1252 | 53.3 |
| Total clinically relevant medication errorsb, n | 139 | 190 | 31 | 19 | 379 | 30.3 |
| Clinically relevant Prescription Error Rateb % | 19.4 | 18.8 | 9.3 | 6.6 | 16.1 | |
| Clinically relevant ME/patient Index | 1.6 | 2.9 | 0.5 | 0.2 | – | |
| Types of Medication Errorsa, n (%) | ||||||
| -Wrong speed rate of administrationb | 45 | 102 | 31 | 14 | 192 | 15.3 |
| -Abbreviations | 258 | 432 | 85 | 83 | 858 | 68.5 |
| Clinically relevantb | 65 | 42 | 0 | 5 | 112 | 13.1 |
| Not clinically relevant | 193 | 390 | 85 | 78 | 746 | 86.9 |
| -Spelling error | 26 | 63 | 25 | 13 | 127 | 10.1 |
| -Misinterpretation/mistaken drug unitsb | 29 | 46 | 0 | 0 | 75 | 6.0 |
| Patients with ideal medication orders, n (%) | 6 (6.8) | 0 (0.0) | 12 (17.6) | 26 (32.9) | 44 | 14.6 |
| Prescriptions with ideal drugs, n (%) | 17 (2.4) | 146 (14.4) | 45 (13.5) | 66 (23.0) | 274 | 11.7 |
ME Medication Error, NICU Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, NIMCU Neonatal Intermediate Special Care Unit, PEC Pediatric Emergency Care, PICU Pediatric Intensive Care Unit
aAccording to the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) Spain (12); b The clinically relevant abbreviations were KCL (Potassium Chloride) and PHT (Phenytoin)