FREQUENCY OF RECOVERED ORDERS AT THE CARDIAC CARE UNIT

Background: Patients' safety is one of the basic concepts in health care systems and one of the major concerns of patient care. Medical errors are amongst the main factors that could threat patients' safety. At intensive care units, there is always the possibility of errors during various stages such as the ordering stage. Objectives: The aim of this study was to determine the frequency of pharmacological and non-pharmacological recovered orders at intensive care units and its associated issues. Patients and Methods: This study was a cross-sectional study based on pharmacological and non-pharmacological orders obtained from patients' records and daily record sheets at the intensive care units of Mazandaran heart center during year 2015. All orders from patients' records (n = 1046), which included 29214 orders, were reviewed during a three-month period. Data was collected using a researcher-made checklist and included patients' demographic information and a medical checklist on the patients' conditions, name of the person who had recorded the order and the person who had discovered the recovered order, type of recovered pharmacological and non pharmacological orders and related factors. To analyze the data, statistical tests such as mean and relative frequency, contin- gency parts and chi-square test were applied using the SPSS 19 software. Results: A total of 29214 pharmacological and non pharmacological orders, written in 1046 patients' records of six coronary care units were investigated. We found that 150 (0.5%) recovered orders were documented. The results showed a significant relationship between the academic year of medical assistants and the recovered orders (K2 = 88.619, P < 0.05); most orders were recovered by second-year assistants. Conclusions: According to this study, it is necessary to define a procedure for careful review of pharmacological and non pharmaco- logical orders. In addition, it is recommended to use clinical pharmacologists and expert critical care nurses to allow the possibility of discovering wrong orders before putting them into practice.