Abstract
The frequency of adverse events with medication in an intensive care unit (ICU) is reported to be higher than that in a general ward. However, the pharmacist's intervention effect over the medical safety of drug therapy in ICU has not been fully evaluated. In this study, we examined the pharmacist's intervention effect on improvement in the safety of medication in ICU.
We investigated medical safety interventions called “preavoid” performed by pharmacists in Saiseikai Yokohamashi Tobu Hospital's ICU from April 2011 to March 2013. The incidents and accidents discovered with the preavoid example were classified according to severity, and the intervention number according to severity was investigated.
Among the 2158 pharmacist's interventions, there were 2060 preavoid examples, which is 95.5% of the total. Furthermore, 1915 (93.0%) of the preavoid cases were found before an incident or accident occurred, and in 145 cases, (7.0%) a disadvantage to patients was prevented from becoming serious. Moreover, a large number of incidents or accidents associated with pharmacist's intervention was classified as less severe, and there were no critical examples in which injury became permanent.
In this study, we suggest that pharmacist's interventions improved the safety of drug therapy by avoiding disadvantages to patients before occurrence, and avoiding disadvantages that have occurred from becoming serious.
