gms | German Medical Science

Context: Little is known about the quality of drug administration and safety in German nursing homes. In 2002 a group of health authority pharmacists in the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia inspected the quality of drug supply in 120 nursing homes. However, this study was not representative and can therefore not be used to draw reliable scientific conclusions.

Aim of the study: The aim of the study was to quantify the number of drug administration errors in German nursing homes. The focus was on checking the administration of regularly scheduled solid oral medication.

Method: The prospective study was carried out in three nursing homes during a period of eight weeks. The drug administration errors were divided into seven categories: wrong time of administration, wrong dosage, wrong drug, missing drug, surplus drug, incorrect pill division and damaged drug.

Result: The study included 196 residents. In total, 8798 daily doses were screened. This equals a total number of 48512 inspected single medications. On average, every nursing home resident received 5.4 solid oral drugs per day. In 53% of the nursing home residents one or more drug administration errors were detected. Based on the 8798 screened daily doses the error rate was 7,3%. The majority of all drug supply errors (50%) occurred in the category incorrect pill division. This is followed by the category missing drug with 22%, surplus drug with 10%, wrong time of administration with 8%, damaged drug with 6%, wrong dosage with 4% and wrong drug with 0%.

Conclusion: The findings of the study show that there is still a need for action with regard to drug administration in German nursing homes. In order to assess the drug administration errors found in this study an evaluation, which is based on an internationally applied instrument, is currently being conducted.