You are here

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
E&P: quality improvement
Quality improvement project to reduce paediatric prescribing errors in a teaching hospital
  1. Marianne Edith Helga Leach,
  2. Nida Pasha,
  3. Katie McKinnon,
  4. Lucinda Etheridge
  1. Paediatric Department, St Georges Hospital, London, UK
  1. Correspondence to Dr Marianne Edith Helga Leach, Paediatric Department, St Georges Hospital, Blackshaw Road, Tooting, London SW17 0QT, UK; doctormarianneleach{at}gmail.com

Abstract

A quality improvement project to reduce paediatric prescribing errors was carried out in a London teaching hospital between June 2013 and March 2014. It involved paediatric medical and surgical wards and a paediatric intensive care unit. A multi professional team of ‘prescribing champions’ was formed. Baseline audit identified high prescribing error rate. Prescribing standards were taught through workshops and ‘prescribing test’. Feedback of weekly sampling and ‘star chart game’ led to an initial improvement of prescribing errors which was not sustained. Qualitative feedback showed increased knowledge and empowerment of multi-professional stakeholders.

  • Audit
  • General Paediatrics
  • Medical Education
  • Paediatric Practice
  • Pharmacology

https://doi.org/10.1136/archdischild-2015-309299

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

    • Contributors MEHL: design of quality improvement project, project lead, developing strategy, developing prescribing mat, poster, star chart game, acquisition, analysis and interpretation of data, drafting, revising and approval of final manuscript. NP: teaching prescribing test at induction, revising and review of manuscript critically. KM: contribution to establishing standards measured, acquisition, analysis and interpretation of data baseline audit. LE: supervising consultant with contributions to the conception and design of the work, interpretation of data, revising manuscript critically and final approval.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.