Abstract
Background and Objective: Elderly patients are at high risk for medication errors in care transitions. The discharge summary aims to counteract drug-related problems due to insufficient information transfer in care transitions, hence the accuracy of its medication information is of utmost importance. The purpose of this study was to describe the medication discrepancy rate and associated risk factors in discharge summaries for elderly patients. Methods: Pharmacists collected random samples of discharge summaries from ten hospitals in southern Sweden. Medication discrepancies, organisational, and patient- and care-specific factors were noted. Patients aged ≥ 75 years with five or more drugs were further included. Descriptive and logistic regression analyses were performed. Results: Discharge summaries for a total of 933 patients were included. Average age was 83.1 years, and 515 patients (55%) were women. Medication discrepancies were noted for 353 patients (38%) (mean 0.87 discrepancies per discharged patient, 95% confidence interval 0.76–0.98). Unintentional addition of a drug was the most common discrepancy type. Central nervous system drugs/analgesics were most commonly affected. Major risk factors for the presence of discrepancies were multi-dose drug dispensing (adjusted odds ratio 3.42, 95% confidence interval 2.48–4.74), an increasing number of drugs in the discharge summary (adjusted odds ratio 1.09, 95% confidence interval 1.05–1.13) and discharge from departments of surgery (adjusted odds ratio 2.96, 95% confidence interval 1.55–5.66). By contrast, an increasing number of drug changes reduced the odds of a discrepancy (adjusted odds ratio 0.93, 95% confidence interval 0.88–0.99). Conclusions: Medication discrepancies were common. In addition, we identified certain circumstances in which greater vigilance may be of considerable value for increased medication safety for elderly patients in care transitions.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 53-62 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| Journal | Drugs - Real World Outcomes |
| Volume | 7 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Mar 2020 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.Keywords
- care transitions
- elderly patients
- healthcare-related adverse events