Evaluating Ways to Reduce Errors in Medication Reconciliations Performed by Nurses in a Rural Hospital Setting

Medication reconciliation, also known as “med recs”, are an important part of a patient’s care during their hospitalization. A med rec is when hospital personnel generate a list of the medications the patient takes at home. Med recs are vital in the hospital admission process because home medications need to be restarted at appropriate times to fully care for the patient. Also, mistakes in a home medication list can lead to serious consequences in the patient’s health. This study focuses on med recs being performed at Marcum and Wallace Hospital in Irvine, Kentucky. More specifically, the study explores the different areas in which nurses at Marcum and Wallace Hospital make the most errors when completing med recs. Such errors include leaving a home medication off the patient’s med rec list, reporting a medication that the patient does not actually take at home, reporting the incorrect medication strength, reporting the incorrect medication frequency, and reporting the incorrect formulation (tablet, capsule, liquid, etc.). Multivariate regressions were utilized in this study to evaluate whether there is an association between the length of the patient’s home medication list, the time of admission, and disease states with different types of med rec errors. Several results of this study were statistically significant, one showing that med rec errors overall increase as the length of the patient’s home medication list increases. Additionally, errors by nurses increased when the patient had a congestive heart failure (CHF) or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) diagnosis. While the results of the study showed these associations exist, factors such as the length of the patient’s medication list, time of admission, and disease state do not demonstrate causation for these errors made by nurses during med recs. Further studies are necessary to rule out other factors that could be contributing to such errors