At the Centre for Pharmacotherapy, Institute of Biomedicine a research group has been developed studying prevention of medication errors in patients The group has been focusing development of a consensual definition of medication errors, quantification studies on the problem as well as interventional studies.

Errors associated with drug therapy seem particularly frequent, especially when patients are transferred from one sector to another. The vast majority of errors have  no clinical relevance while less than 10 per cent have been shown to cause harm to patients and increased mortality  and  morbidity. As drug consumption is high, particularly among the elderly, it must be assumed that even a modest risk of serious medication errors could lead to a large number of injuries with the consequence of added costs due to prolonged hospitalization and additional treatment. We have performed several studies demonstrating that medication errors are a problem in Danish hospitals. However, there has been no conclusive  evidence for the effect of medication review on length of hospital stay, readmissions and death. One possible reason could be that all patients have undergone the same intervention despite the complexity of their drug therapy. It is known that the risk of clinically significant errors is related to both patient factors such as age and comorbidity, and to drugs used in each individual, e.g. number of drugs and their potential toxicity. This has led to a current major study of individual risk stratification for patients (see below).

Research interests

The aim of the project is to develop, validate and document the effect of an objective and easily applicable algorithm able to  stratify patient risk of injury caused by medication errors and, hence, determine the level of intervention needed in drug therapy. The long-term  aim is to integrate the algorithm into existing IT systems to be able to generate risk scores automatically. This will lead to increased patient safety and optimize drug treatment as well as resource utilization in the hospital sector.

The project includes the following stages:

• Development of algorithm (risk factors, intervention possibilities and scoring system) 
• Validation of the algorithm (test on a standardized population and pilot study)
• Documentation of the algorithm (prospective, randomized, controlled trial)
• Health economic evaluation of interventional impact based upon the algorithm
• Improving applicability of medication reviews based on the algorithm (questionnaire study)

Methodologies

Consensus studies on development of common definitions.
Validation studies on methods for measuring medication errors.
Quantitative studies on medication errors.
Randomised controlled studies on interventional effects towards medication errors.

Collaborators

The Hospital Pharmacy Aarhus
Jan Mainz, Professor, PhD, Chief Physician, Department of Psychiatry, Aalborg University Hospital
Ann Lykkegaard Sørensen, PhD student, MHSc, Department of Psychiatry, Aalborg University Hospital