Article Text
Abstract
Background and Importance Recently, a redesign has been taking place in çcircuit of prescription, dispensing, preparation and administration of medications in Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). These changes are aimed at improving the safety of the medication use process.
Aim and Objectives To evaluate the safety related to the use of medications perceived by professionals after the implementation of improvement measures in the circuit.
Material and Methods A questionnaire was developed for nursing staff to assess the perceived safety in: prescription by assisted electronic prescription(AEP), dispensing through an automated medication dispensing system integrated with AEP, and drug administration through smart pumps. Secondly, a questionnaire was developed for medical staff to assess the perceived safety of EAP and pharmaceutical validation. In both , questions were included about measures to be implemented to improve circuit safety.
The questionnaires consist of 17(nursing staff) and 14(medical staff) questions with an average completion time of 2 minutes. Both were designed in GoogleForms® to give maximum diffusion.
Results Response rate was of 60%(42 people filled out the questionnaire, 26 from nursing staff and 16 of medical staff). Regarding AEP, nursing staff agreed that it provides greater safety than manual prescription, although 7.7%(n=2) considered that the information is not always clear and complete. Regarding medical personnel, 88% consider that the AEP provides greater security.
Regarding pharmaceutical validation, 100% of medical staff believe that it is an improvement in the quality of care and that it provides security to the process.
Regarding dispensing, 96% consider that medicines are more easily found with respect to the plant medicine cabinet system and 85% consider that the integration with AEP allows unequivocally obtaining the prescribed medication.
In the administration, 85% of nursing staff consider that smart medication infusion pumps prevent exceeding therapeutic doses.
Finally, in terms of areas for improvement, the majority of nursing staff considers that the measures should focus on preparation(57.7%) and the medical staff considers that they should focus on administration(75%). Administration by barcode is the measure most voted for both groups to work on in coming years.
Conclusion and Relevance The perception of safety by NICU staff of measures implemented is high. There are still areas for improvement such as preparation or administration.
Conflict of Interest No conflict of interest