Pharmacy quality improvement project to enhance the medication management process in pediatric patients

Background Improvement in the quality of the medication management process is a crucial component of twenty-first-century medicine. Aim To improve the quality of medication management process within pediatric specialty through designing a quality improvement project for the pharmaceutical care services in a children' hospital to solve the drug-related problems during drug prescribing, administration, and monitoring. Methods A total of 900 medical files were evaluated (100 file/month) from the pediatric medical ward to detect any medication errors during prescribing, administration, or monitoring of the drugs. Three pharmacy quality indicators were designed to detect any medication errors during prescribing, administration, or monitoring of the drugs, then a collective datasheet was designed to record any defect in the system during drug management process within the hospital. A quality improvement project was designed using many quality improvement techniques to decrease the rates of medication errors in each drug handling stage. Brainstorming, fishbone chart, questionnaire, and voting were the main quality tools used to detect the causes of medication errors problem in pediatric patients. Certain actions were implemented which included educational program, implementation of clinical pharmacy, intravenous admixture, and drug information services. Results The quality improvement interventions succeeded in decreasing the rates of medication errors in each stage. These interventions succeeded in decreasing the rates of medication errors in prescribing, administration, and monitoring stages from 47, 60, and 56% respectively to <= 15% within 9 months. Conclusion Pharmacists can have a key role in improving the health-care system's quality in developing countries' health-care systems.