You are here

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Error management
Causes of preventable drug-related hospital admissions: a qualitative study
  1. R Howard1,
  2. A Avery2,
  3. P Bissell3
  1. 1
    School of Pharmacy, University of Reading, Reading, Berkshire, UK
  2. 2
    School of Community Health Sciences, University of Nottingham Medical School, Nottingham, UK
  3. 3
    ScHARR, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK
  1. R Howard, School of Pharmacy, University of Reading, Whiteknights, PO Box 226, Reading, Berkshire RG6 6AP, UK; rachel.howard{at}reading.ac.uk

Abstract

Objective: To explore the causes of preventable drug-related admissions (PDRAs) to hospital.

Design: Qualitative case studies using semi-structured interviews and medical record review; data analysed using a framework derived from Reason’s model of organisational accidents and cascade analysis.

Participants: 62 participants, including 18 patients, 8 informal carers, 17 general practitioners, 12 community pharmacists, 3 practice nurses and 4 other members of healthcare staff, involved in events leading up to the patients’ hospital admissions.

Setting: Nottingham, UK.

Results: PDRAs are associated with problems at multiple stages in the medication use process, including prescribing, dispensing, administration, monitoring and help seeking. The main causes of these problems are communication failures (between patients and healthcare professionals and different groups of healthcare professionals) and knowledge gaps (about drugs and patients’ medical and medication histories). The causes of PDRAs are similar irrespective of whether the hospital admission is associated with a prescribing, monitoring or patient adherence problem.

Conclusions: The causes of PDRAs are multifaceted and complex. Technical solutions to PDRAs will need to take account of this complexity and are unlikely to be sufficient on their own. Interventions targeting the human causes of PDRAs are also necessary—for example, improving methods of communication.

https://doi.org/10.1136/qshc.2007.022681

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Funding: Funded by NHS R&D funding, through the Nottingham Primary Care Research Partnership, and £10 000 Galen award from the Pharmacy Practice Research Trust. The sponsors of the study had no role in the study design, data collection, data analysis, data interpretation, or writing of the report. RH had full access to all the data in the study and had final responsibility for the decision to submit for publication.

    • Competing interests: None.

    • Ethics approval: The Nottingham research ethics committee and research governance offices approved the study.

    Linked Articles

    • Quality lines
      Quality lines
      David P Stevens
      BMJ Quality & Safety 2008; 17 82-82 Published Online First: 02 Apr 2008.