The Impact of Newly Introduced Online Medication Error Reporting System on The Reporting Behavior of Pharmacists for Medication Errors

Abstract

Background: Medication safety is a worldwide concern and voluntary reporting is one of the most important detection methods used to avoid medication error recurrence. Medication errors should be reported to a national monitoring program so that the shared experiences can facilitate learning and enhance error prevention strategies. In June 2014, we established the National Office for the Handling and Reduction of Medication Errors (NO HARMe) and its national online system for medication error reporting. The primary objective of this system is to improve medication safety in Egypt by learning from errors and sharing such experiences among health care organizations.

Purpose: This study analyzes reports to the Egyptian medication error (ME) reporting system from June to December 2014. The study also evaluates MEs reporting barriers from the pharmacists' perspective, before and after using the NO HARMe reporting system and to what extent this new system was effective, satisfactory and suitable for their use.

Methods: Fifty hospital pharmacists received training on ME reporting using the national reporting system. All received reports were reviewed and analyzed. The pieces of data analyzed were patient age, gender, clinical setting, stage, type, medication(s), outcome, cause(s), and recommendation(s). After six months of using the new system, we used a paper based questionnaire with participants to describe: Barriers of reporting they were facing during reporting of errors (before receiving the training), any remaining barriers they still have while using the new system and their feedback on the national form.