Medication errors in the everyday experience of health professionals at a teaching hospital: a descriptive and exploratory study
Keywords:
Erros de medicação, Assistência a saúde, Uso de medicamentos, Gerenciamento de segurança.Abstract
Objective: This article intends to identify the definition of medication errors, their occurrence in the workplace and actions undertaken upon their occurrence, according to the views of health professionals.
Methods: It is a descriptive study meant to identify the opinions of 119 health professionals of a college hospital on medication errors, using a questionnaire. Data were gathered during 10 days in January 2011. Data gathered through the questionnaire were transferred to a SPSS Statistics 16.0 spread sheet.
Results: 119 health professionals were interviewed. Most professionals were women (77.3 %), and most of them were between 25-30 years old (52.10%). 167 key-words on the concept of medication error were found; 36.53% (61) referred to errors occurring during drug administration. 63.02% (75) of the respondents witnessed some medication error in their work sectors. As regards reaction to errors, the answers most commonly found were informing supervisors (29.05%), and correcting without informing the persons in charge of the sector (15.54%)
Conclusion: The concept of medication errors is fragmented among these professionals, as well as their decision-making upon their occurrence. The study is a contribution to the better understanding of medication errors experienced by the respondents.
Downloads
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
The authors hereby transfer, assign, or otherwise convey to RBFHSS: (1) the right to grant permission to republish or reprint the stated material, in whole or in part, without a fee; (2) the right to print republish copies for free distribution or sale; and (3) the right to republish the stated material in any format (electronic or printed). In addition, the undersigned affirms that the article described above has not previously been published, in whole or part, is not subject to copyright or other rights except by the author(s), and has not been submitted for publication elsewhere, except as communicated in writing to RHFHSS with this document.
Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY-NC-ND) that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
Serlf-archiving policy
This journal permits and encourages authors to post and archive the final pdf of the articles submitted to the journal on personal websites or institutional repositories after publication, while providing bibliographic details that credit its publication in this journal.
