Structured method for the practice of medication conciliation in an oncological hospital

Abstract

Medication error is any preventable event capable of causing or leading to the inappropriate use of medication that is under the control of health care professionals, patients or consumers. It is estimated that 46% of medication errors occur at hospital admission and one way to reduce them is by adopting medication reconciliation in a hospital unit. The work was aimed at creating a method for the practice of drug conciliation in a structured manner. An exploratory study was carried out in a large oncologic hospital in Rio de Janeiro/Brazil, using the method to hospitalize patients in the hospital's Gynecology and Oncology Services. The method was applied to 201 hospitalized patients, allowing the measurement of the frequency of drug conciliation instituted. Of the total number of patients interviewed, 89.6% were female; 28.2% were between 61 and 70 years of age and 25.2% were between 51 and 60 years of age (25.2%). The main reason for hospitalization was surgical procedure (69.3%). Through the proposed method, discrepancies were identified; these were recorded according to the classification of Otero. From the proposed method, the drugs used prior to hospitalization can be compared with the medical prescription and the discrepancies analyzed, increasing the quality of care in hospital routine.