Drop in incorrect crushing and/or suspending of solid peroral drugs for patients with feeding tubes
THURSDAY, Feb. 12, 2015 (HealthDay News) — A newly developed intervention program tailored to hospitals can reduce the rate of inappropriately prepared solid peroral drugs for patients with feeding tubes, according to a study published online Feb. 5 in the Journal of Clinical Pharmacy and Therapeutics.
Kristina Lohmann, from the University of Heidelberg in Germany, and colleagues developed and assessed an intervention program tailored to hospitals to reduce drug preparation errors. Observers documented and assessed drug preparation processes for all peroral drugs for patients with feeding tubes in a gastroenterological intensive care unit (775 drug preparation processes) and a surgical ward for oral, dental, and maxillofacial disease (surgical ward; 975 drug preparation processes). The authors assessed the rate of inappropriately crushed and/or suspended solid peroral drugs.
The researchers observed a significant reduction in incorrect crushing and/or suspending of solid peroral drugs for administration to patients with feeding tubes with the intervention program. The reduction was from 9.8 to 4.2 percent on the intensive care unit (P < 0.01) and from 5.7 to 1.4 percent on the surgical ward (P < 0.01).
“The implementation of the newly developed intervention program significantly reduced the rate of inappropriately prepared solid peroral drugs, suggesting that it is an effective measure to enable safe drug administration for inpatients with feeding tubes,” the authors write.
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