Abstract

ASSESSMENT OF INTRAVENOUS ADMIXTURES INCOMPATIBILITIES & THE INCIDENCE OF INTRAVENOUS DRUG ADMINISTRATION ERRORS

A. Nagaraju*& A. Samson Deepak, C. Aruna& K. Swathi, Purushothama Reddy.K, Dr. Sri Devi.K, Dr. M.Purushothaman

ABSTRACT

Background: Intravenous(IV) admixtures are the preparations consist of 1or more sterile drug products added to an IV fluid, generally Normal saline Solution (0.9% Nacl) or Dextrose (5%) alone or in combination. Drugs that may cause irritation or toxicity when given as a rapid direct IV injection are also prepared as IV admixtures. Aims & Objectives: “To assess the potential incompatibilities associated with IV admixtures & the incidence of IV drug administration errors in a tertiary care teaching hospital”. Materials & Methods: The data for the present study was collected by „Chart Review‟ method for a period of 6 months. This study included all the hospitalized patients of General Medicine. The collected data was analyzed for incompatibilities by using standard drug reference texts. Results: We found 114 combinations (both Drug-Solute and Drug-Drug combinations) among them 29 (25.43%) were compatible, 33 (28.94%) incompatible, 8 (7.01%) were variable and 44 (38.59%) were undocumented combinations. Out of 16 IV drugs administration errors 4 (25%) were found to be wrong drug preparation errors, 6 (37.5%) were wrong rate of administration, 2 (12.5%) were wrong time errors and 4 (25%) were omission errors. Conclusion: Our study concluded that this type of research work would certainly increases the safety in the use of IV admixtures. It is important to make health care professionals to aware of compatibility problems, daily prescription review by clinical pharmacist and providing unbiased information from reliable references could possibly prevent compatibility errors in the wards.

Keywords: Intravenous admixtures, Incompatibilities, Administration errors, Clinical Pharmacist.