Pediatric medication errors in the postanesthesia care unit: analysis of MEDMARX data

Abstract

Medication errors involving pediatric patients in the postanesthesia care unit may occur as frequently as one in every 20 medication orders and are more likely to cause harm when compared to medication errors in the overall population. Researchers examined six years of records from the MEDMARX database and used consecutive nonprobability sampling and descriptive statistics to compare medication errors in the pediatric data set to those occurring in the total population data set. Nineteen different causes of error involving 28 different products were identified. The results of the study indicate that an organization can focus on causes of errors and products involved in errors to mitigate future error occurrence.