OBJECTIVE: This multi-center study identified the most frequent types of medication errors in long-term @entity146 care hospitals. SETTING: Japan. DESIGN AND STUDY @entity1 : We asked 132 units in 44 Japanese @entity146 hospitals to introduce an in- @entity1 incident reporting system on potential adverse drug events (PADEs) for the period 1 October to 30 November 2000. We analyzed types of PADE, outcomes, and characteristics of @entity1 , staff, and units. RESULTS: We received 221 PADE incident reports from 85 units of 44 hospitals. One-quarter (24.9%) of the incidents were intercepted before reaching @entity1 . The frequency of monitoring of the @entity1 by clinical staff in response to medication errors increased by 8.1%. Wrong drug administration, i.e. giving a drug to a @entity1 that was not the drug prescribed for that @entity1 , was the most common type of incident (35.7%). Logistic regression analysis revealed that wrong drug administration occurred more frequently on units with either fewer registered nurses, or two or more @entity1 with the same (or similar) name staying on the same unit. Incident reporters evaluated wrong drug administration as being potentially more serious than the other types of medication error. Wrong drug administration was seen more frequently in units with no @entity1 name printed on medication drug pouches. CONCLUSIONS: Wrong drug administration was the most common type of PADE, and may result in more serious consequences than others. Even a simple organizational quality improvement effort, in which printed @entity1 ' names are placed on the drug pouch (not only with each prescription but with each drug administration), could reduce risk to @entity1 from adverse outcomes due to medication errors.

Common types of medication errors on long-term XXXX care units.

@entity1 :: ('9606', 'Species') :: ['PARTICIPANTS', 'patients', 'patient'] @entity146 :: ('MESH:D001523', 'Disease') :: ['psychiatric']
@entity146 :: (MESH:D001523,Disease) :: ['psychiatric']
