Background Some patients directly hospitalised via the emergency department are changed from their current home treatment. The pharmacy department aims to identify any errors and rectify them.

Purpose

• To find out how many home treatment prescriptions could lead to an error in patients hospitalised by the emergency medical service.

• To identify any issues and analyse them.

Material and methods Prospective observational study. 366 Patients hospitalised from January 2014 were followed.

The analysis included: medicines prescribed 48 h after admission, age, gender, team on duty and problems related to the home treatment. We classified the issues found as:

1. Treatment not followed at all

2. Treatment partially followed.

3. Patient’s previous medicines not stated.

4. Patient’s previous medicines stated incorrectly.

5. Illegible writing.

Data source: Savac (prescription and clinical history records), Selene (specialist care medical history records).

Results 366 consultant prescriptions were analysed. 30% of them were for a home treatment.

Patient characteristics: Males: 51%; 85% of the patients were over 60 years; the Internal Medicine ward had the highest number of admissions, 32%; 4.7% of the patients had problems related to home treatment

Based on our classification of the issues found to do with home treatment, the following frequencies were obtained:

Type 1: 31.5%;

Type 2: 6.25%;

Type 3:37.5%

Type 4:18.7%;

Type 5: 6.25%

Conclusion Issues related to home treatment were identified in 4.7% of the patients.

The most common issue was type 3: Patient’s previous medicines not stated.

The ward with the highest number of issues detected was the orthopaedic surgery department.

Reference

1. Tomás S, Chanovas M, Roqueta F, Alcaraz J, Toranzo T, Grupo EVADUR-SEMES. EVADUR: eventos adversos ligados a la asistencia en los servicios de urgencias de hospitales españoles. Emergencias 2010;22:415–28

ReferenceNo conflict of interest.