ARTICLE Errors Associated with IV Infusions in Critical Care

Background: All medication errors are serious, but those associated with the IV route of administration often result in the most severe outcomes. According to the literature, IV medications are associated with 54 % of potential adverse events, and 56 % of medication errors. Objectives: To determine the type and frequency of errors associated with prescribing, documenting, and administering IV infusions, and to also determine if a correlation exists between the incidence of errors and either the time of day (day versus night) or the day of the week (week-day versus weekend) in an academic medicosurgical intensive care unit without computerized order entry or documentation. Methods: As part of a quality improvement initiative, a prospective, observational audit was conducted for all IV infusions administered to critically ill patients during 40 randomly selected shifts over a 7-month period in 2007. For each IV infusion, data were collected from 3 sources