Clinical studyIncidence and preventability of adverse drug events in nursing homes☆
Section snippets
Study setting
Eighteen community-based nursing homes located in central and eastern Massachusetts participated in the project. These facilities were recruited from among the 81 nursing homes with more than 50 beds in this geographic region that were served by a large pharmacy provider to long-term care facilities. At the time of this study, this pharmacy provider delivered services for 42,000 nursing home residents in Massachusetts, representing more than 80% of all long-term care beds in the state. The
Results
During the study period, 2916 nursing home residents (mean [± SD] age of 84 ± 9 years; 77% women) contributed 28,839 resident-months of observation in the 18 participating nursing homes. The nurse and pharmacist investigators identified 979 possible drug-related incidents during the study, of which 245 (25%) were not considered to be adverse drug events or potential adverse drug events by the physician-reviewers. Of the 734 remaining incidents, 546 (74%) were classified as adverse drug events
Discussion
We found that adverse drug events occurred commonly among nursing home residents and that more than half were preventable. Serious, life-threatening, and fatal adverse drug events were more likely to be preventable than less severe events. Most errors associated with preventable events occurred at the ordering and monitoring stages.
Although it is difficult to compare the findings of the present study on adverse drug events in nursing home residents with studies performed in other clinical
Acknowledgements
The authors thank the nursing homes participating in this study for their commitment and dedication to improving the quality of care provided to nursing home residents. They also thank Mary Ellen Stansky and Jackie Cernieux, MPH, for their assistance with technical aspects relating to the study and Bessie Petropoulos for assistance with manuscript preparation.
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Supported by research grant AG14472 from the National Institute on Aging, Bethesda, Maryland. The contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official views of the National Institute on Aging.
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