Improving the quality of insulin prescribing for people with diabetes being discharged from hospital

Insulin errors and contributing factors affecting people with diabetes in hospital: A scoping review

BACKGROUND

Whilst insulin therapy errors are commonly reported in hospital and can cause significant negative outcomes for people with diabetes, there is no standardised approach to identifying when and why these errors occur within complex inpatient settings.

OBJECTIVE

This scoping review was conducted to explore and map the types and classification of reported insulin errors in the care of people with diabetes in hospital inpatient settings and to identify potential interacting components/factors associated with these errors.

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS

The review followed the methodological approach of the Joanna Briggs Institute for scoping reviews. Published and unpublished literature (grey) in the English language were searched from January 2000 to July 2024 on Medline, CINAHL, Embase and other relevant websites. Eligible studies were those reporting insulin errors occurring in hospital during the treatment of people who had diabetes. A new framework was developed for examining insulin errors (RESILIENT - interacting-components-in-insulin-use-in-hospital). This was applied to categorise incidents and interacting components identified. Results were summarised graphically and descriptively.

RESULTS

A total of 124 peer-reviewed publications and reports were included. Only forty-nine studies attempted to classify the type of errors reported and they varied considerably in terminology and focus. Insulin errors were most frequently reported at the prescribing, administration, communication/documentation and medication review stages. Common factors associated with reported insulin errors included: time-critical coordination of insulin related tasks (for example coordination of glucose monitoring, meal delivery and mealtime insulin administration; prescribing and medication review; intravenous insulin infusion management); capability at point of care, staff knowledge, non-adherence to guidelines/recommendations; teamwork, communication gaps or errors; patient factors; organisational processes/systems, education and training; equipment (e.g. lack off system integration, right equipment at point of care).

CONCLUSIONS

The review highlighted considerable heterogeneity in approaches to identifying and classifying insulin errors in the literature. This review identified incidents occurring in areas of the insulin process which have been previously rarely explored. Further studies are needed, using standardised approaches which capture the complexity of insulin errors within the hospital system, to support the development of interventions which improve insulin safety. Use of RESILIENT Framework could offer a more standardised method of data collection and analysis of insulin errors.

REGISTRATION

The protocol was registered at the Centre for Open Science (https://osf.io/nmd8a).

SOCIAL MEDIA ABSTRACT

A novel approach to identifying, classifying & exploring insulin errors for people with diabetes in hospital @_ChristinaLange.

Developing a Diabetes Discharge Order Set for Patients With Diabetes on Insulin

BACKGROUND

Insulin, a high-risk medication, is prone to prescribing errors. Patients with diabetes experience higher hospitalization rates and extended hospital stays. Prescription errors, such as missing orders, inappropriate insulin type, missing instructions, and lack of appropriate intensification of insulin regimens are common issues. This project explored the use of system-based interventions and educational tools to minimize errors and improve the quality of insulin discharge regimens.

METHODS

A needs assessment and baseline chart review were conducted before adapting a diabetes order set obtained from the University of California, San Diego. Subsequent beta testing and broader implementation were followed by repeat chart reviews to assess the impact.

RESULTS

Providers strongly desired an insulin discharge order set, with 98% of those surveyed expressing this preference. Those who were high utilizers of the order set showed increased rates of ordering all supplies (55%), compared with pre-intervention rates (27%). However, no change was observed in the practice of intensifying insulin regimens in patients with uncontrolled diabetes upon discharge.

DISCUSSION

Insulin prescribing is prone to error. A diabetes discharge order set may improve the percentage of patients who receive necessary insulin supplies at discharge and provide educational resources to encourage appropriate insulin regimens at hospital discharge.

Handwritten prescription practices in a public hospital in Uasin Gishu County, Kenya: a best practice implementation project

BACKGROUND

Prescription writing error is a common phenomenon in the health sector. Appropriate handwritten prescription practices minimize medical errors during medical drug dispensing.

OBJECTIVES

This project aimed to identify the extent to which clinicians adhere to handwritten drug prescription best practices and implement evidence-based strategies to improve compliance with handwritten prescription best practices in an outpatient department.

METHODS

The project was conceptually informed by the JBI Model of Evidence-Based Health care and the JBI Evidence Implementation Framework. Baseline and follow-up audit data were collected and analyzed using JBI's Practical Application of Clinical Evidence System (PACES) software. The JBI Getting Research into Practice (GRiP) program was used to identify potential barriers and design intervention strategies. The project was conducted in a public hospital outpatient department in Uasin Gishu County, Kenya.

RESULTS

There was a 100% improvement in compliance with the number of prescribers who had received education on essential features of a handwritten drug prescription. High compliance was observed in prescriptions that indicated the patient name (99%) and date of prescription (98%) in the follow-up audit. Approximately half of the prescriptions included a diagnosis of the disease in both the baseline and the follow-up audit. However, in the follow-up audit, only 21% of the prescriptions had legible handwriting and 27% prescribed drugs using the generic drug name.

CONCLUSION

Regular audits and dissemination of audit findings through continuous medical education, hospital communication forums, and notices improved compliance with the number of prescriptions that contained the patient identifier and the date of prescription.

Improving documentation of prescriptions for as-required medications in hospital inpatients

It is estimated that 1 in 10 hospital inpatients in Scotland have experienced a medication error. In our unit, an audit in 2019 identified documentation of as-required prescriptions on drug Kardexes as an important target for improvement. This project aimed to reduce the percentage of these errors to <5% in the ward in 6 months.Weekly point prevalence surveys were used to measure medication error rates over a 12-week baseline period. Errors in route, frequency of dose and maximum dose accounted for >80% of all prescribing errors. The intervention was a poster reminder about the three most common errors linked to standards for prescribing pain medication. Barriers to change were identified through inductive thematic analysis of semistructured interviews with five ward doctors and two staff nurses.In the 6 weeks after intervention, our run chart showed a shift in maximum dose errors per patient, which fell from 75% to 26%. However, route and frequency errors remained high at >70% per patient. Most of these errors were due to use of abbreviations, and qualitative interviews revealed that senior doctors and nurses believed that these abbreviations were safe. We found some evidence from national guidelines to support these beliefs.Overall, the intervention was associated with decreased prevalence of patients without a maximum dose written on their prescription, but lack of space on drug prescriptions was identified as a key barrier to further improvement in both maximum dose and abbreviation errors.

Use and validation of a survey tool to measure the perceived effectiveness of insulin prescribing safety interventions in UK hospitals

AIMS

To describe the use and validation of a survey tool to elicit the opinion of hospital pharmacists and medicines safety officers in the UK regarding the perceived effectiveness of strategies to improve insulin prescribing safety in hospitals.

METHODS

One respondent from each participating organization completed the survey on behalf of the main acute hospital in their trust (n = 92). A five-point Likert scale was used to determine opinion on how effective 22 different interventions were at promoting insulin safety at the respondent's trust. The tool, the Perception of Effectiveness of Prescribing Safety Interventions for Insulin (PEPSII) questionnaire, underwent content validity testing. The reliability was estimated using Cronbach's alpha (α).

RESULTS

The PEPSII questionnaire demonstrated good reliability (α = 0.867). Outreach team review and mandatory insulin education were the highest-scoring interventions; the insulin passport was amongst the lowest scoring interventions. Most interventions were considered more effective by trusts using them compared to those who didn't, except for self-administration policies, electronic prescribing and the insulin passport.

CONCLUSIONS

The perceived effectiveness of a variety of insulin prescribing safety strategies in UK hospitals was described by leveraging a purposely developed survey tool. The results describe current levels of support for recommended interventions, and may facilitate the direction of both local and national insulin prescribing safety improvement efforts.

Lessons learned: using adverse incident reports to investigate the characteristics and causes of prescribing errors

Introduction

Prescribing errors are a principal cause of preventable harm in healthcare. This study aims to establish a systematic approach to analysing prescribing-related adverse incident reports, in order to elucidate the characteristics and contributing factors of common prescribing errors and target multifaceted quality improvement initiatives.

Methods

All prescribing-related adverse incident reports submitted across one NHS board over 12 months were selected. Incidents involving commonly implicated drugs (involved in ≥10 incidents) underwent analysis to establish likely underlying causes using Reason’s Model of Accident Causation.

Results

330 prescribing-related adverse incident reports were identified. Commonly implicated drugs were insulin (10% of incidents), gentamicin (7%), co-amoxiclav (5%) and amoxicillin (5%). The most prevalent error types were prescribing amoxicillin when contraindicated due to allergy (5%); prescribing co-amoxiclav when contraindicated due to allergy (5%); prescribing the incorrect type of insulin (3%); and omitting to prescribe insulin (3%). Error-producing factors were identified in 86% of incidents involving commonly implicated drugs. 53% of incidents involved error-producing factors related to the working environment; 38% involved factors related to the healthcare team; and 37% involved factors related to the prescriber.

Discussion

This study establishes that systematic analysis of adverse incident reports can efficiently identify the characteristics and contributing factors of common prescribing errors, in a manner useful for targeting quality improvement. Furthermore, this study produced a number of salient findings. First, a narrow range of drugs were implicated in the majority of incidents. Second, a small number of error types were highly recurrent. Lastly, a range of contributing factors were evident, with those related to the working environment contributing to the majority of prescribing errors analysed.

Discharge pharmacotherapy for Type 2 diabetic inpatients at two hospitals of different tiers in Zhejiang Province, China

Objects

To look into the discharge pharmacotherapy for type 2 diabetics admitted to two general hospitals of different ranks and inspect current real-world management of discharge pharmacology and its related factors.

Methods

Type 2 diabetics admitted to a tertiary general hospital (Ningbo Medical Treatment Centre Lihuili Hospital, LHLH) or a secondary general hospital (Simen Hospital, SMH) for intensification of their anti-diabetics were included for retrospective analysis. Patients’ demographics, clinical characteristics, admission diabetes therapy and discharge diabetes pharmacology were analyzed and compared among patients in each hospital as well as between two hospitals.

Results

391 patients from LHLH and 164 patients from SMH were included for analyzing. Compared with patients from LHLH, patients from SMH were older, more illiterate and had higher HbA1c concentrations. While there was a nearly equal split of oral anti-diabetes drugs (OADs)-only and Insulin treatment in LHLH’s discharge pharmacotherapy, insulin treatment dominated SMH’s. Basal-and-bolus insulin assumed the majority of SMH’s insulin regimens but only accounted for less than 20% of LHLH’s. The principal discrepancy in OADs-only treatment existed in the utilization of newer classes of OADs. Cost and body mass index (BMI) were the main differentiating factors among OADs-only treatments while duration, BMI and HbA1c differ among insulin treatments at LHLH. Clinical characteristics didn’t significantly differ among OADs-only treatments and HbA1c was the only differentiating factor among insulin treatments at SMH. Overall, hospital, duration, HbA1c, and vascular diseases were main factors that affect discharge pharmacology.

Conclusions

Great disparities exist in the discharge pharmacotherapy at two hospitals. Diabetes management is mostly glucose-oriented at SMH while multifactorial considerations were reflected in LHLH’s discharge pharmacotherapy. Besides differences in patients’ demographics, medication availability and diagnosis of early-stage vascular complications, lack of practical algorithm for discharge management in T2DM may be the underlying deficiency and a key part for future improvement.