Description of studies that presented percent of orders written with a medication error (ME) or adverse drug event (ADE)
| Reference | Type of ICU | Method of study | Description of methods | ME definition | Percentage of orders with an ME |
| 24 | Multidisciplinary ICU | Prescription review | A pharmacist reviewed the nursing MAR for the previous 24 h period and compared it with the physician's orders in the patients chart and recorded all doses on a patient data collection sheet. The patient's TISS score was available for the exact date/time of error, as were ICU deaths. | Drug administered to wrong patient, wrong dose, wrong medication, wrong route of administration, wrong time, patient has allergy to prescribed medication, omission of a medication, error in infusion rate, improper administration, administration of the wrong dosage form | 2.2 (none of these resulted in significant patient harm) |
| 29 | General ICU | Prescription review | Details of all MEs identified by the ICU clinical pharmacist, in the course of his normal prescription review, were prospectively recorded. MEs were assessed by type and patient outcomes. | Prescribing decision or prescription writing process resulted in either an unintentional significant reduction in the probability of treatment being timely and effective or an unintentional significant increase in the risk of harm when compared with generally accepted practice | 5.4 (no patient harm mentioned) |
| 30 | PICU | Prescription review | ICU ward pharmacist recorded the prescriptions determined to be in error, noting type of error, drug and the person who prescribed the drug. An ICU doctor then classified the type and severity errors. | Dose error, intravenous compatibility error, drug interaction, administration error | 5.9 (0.5=significant error) |
| 31 | Not specified | Prescription review | All drug prescriptions were reviewed daily during the study period and errors identified by comparison with standards given in the British National Formulary. Errors were categorised by nature and clinical outcome. | Prescriptions which did not follow standards given by the British National Formulary were considered in error | 11.2 (no patient harm mentioned) |
| ADE definition | Percentage of orders written resulting in ADE | ||||
| 32 | 9 PICUS | Prescription review | MEs were detected using three levels of surveillance. Pharmacists reviewed orders before entering them into computer system and the PICU nurse reviewed orders before transcription. An oversight team acted at each hospital to try and standardise the process across the hospitals involved | Not provided | 0.09 |
ADE, adverse drug event; ICU, intensive care unit; ME, medication error.