Segurança do paciente: potenciais interações medicamentosas favorecidas pela sobreposição de medicamentos aprazados pelo enfermeiro

Abstract

Drug therapy is predominant in the hospital environment, presenting itself as a context subject to numerous incidents possibilities, therefore, it’s more challenging to intercept situations that compromise the quality of care. The nurse is responsible for the medication process and plays an essential role in detecting and preventing drug interactions by the adjustment of the schedules during the scheduling. The aim of this study was to investigate the potential drug interactions favored by overlapping of medications scheduled by nurses in patients’ prescriptions at a clinical inpatient unit. This is a descriptive cross-sectional study of document analysis, through a quantitative approach with 260 drug prescriptions. For convenience, the prescriptions selected were those from adult patients from two inpatient units of a university hospital located in Rio de Janeiro, during September 2019. Data were analyzed through descriptive statistics using Microsoft Excel, and the potential drug interactions were identified using the Drug Interactions tool (Medscape®). The present work was approved by the Ethics and Research Committee of the mentioned institution under the peer review: 3,556,571. There were 3066 analyzed doses, with a concentration of four hours (10h, 18h, 22h and 06h) showing standardized institutional schedule. The oral route was the most predominant (74%). The reasons for dose omission were: 60.3% without justification; in 22.8%, there was no medication, or it was not standardized; and, in 5.3% of doses, the time was absent. The main classes involved were: digestive tract and metabolism (38.6%), general anti-infectives for systemic use (15.9%) and nervous system (15.3%). The medication error rate was 5.44. Regarding the type of prescription, there was a predominance of preset prescriptions (n=194, 74.61%); only 3 (1.15%) were handwritten, and 63 (24.23%) were mixed. The potential drug interactions with lower severity were valproic acid/ isoniazid and calcium carbonate/ aspirin, both with 19.7%; those with moderate severity were lopinavir/ clonazepam (11.9%) and diazepam/ tramadol (7.3%); and the ones with severe risk were isoniazid/ omeprazole (12.3%) and rifampicin/ dexamethasone (2.8%). Nursing staff must consider patient-centered care by adopting a medication schedule closer to the patient’s individual needs, including sleep preservation and avoiding drug overlap; a proper verbal and written communication; the use of databases as a clinical decision support tool; double checking; the elaboration of a scheduling guide, as well as a reserved environment for its accomplishment; and the configuration of the work process regarding the organization, the distribution and a proper packaging of the medications.