A comparison of automated infusion device technology to prevent medication errors in pediatric and adult intensive care unit patients

Objective: To compare possible differences in the proportion of medication errors associated with high-risk medications that were avoided by the use of automated infusion device (AID) technology in pediatric and adult intensive care unit (ICU) patients. A secondary purpose was to investigate the number of serious adverse drug events (ADEs) identified by root-cause analyses (RCA).Method: The study included pediatric and adult patients receiving high-risk medications by continuous infusion in an academic medical center with mixed medical-surgical ICUs. A retrospective evaluation of 1 year's data collected prospectively in an AID database was used to compare the proportion of medication errors avoided based on reprogramming events (2.5 times limit as a low threshold) and overrides (10 times limit as high). Information obtained from RCAs was used to compare the proportion of serious ADEs that occurred during the 5-year periods before and after AID implementation.Results: The pediatric population was 1.68 times (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.18 to 2.38) more likely to require a reprogramming event than the adult acute care population for all high-risk medications combined. Significantly more reprogramming events occurred in the pediatric patients with potassium (relative risk [RR], 2.77; 95% CI, 1.15 to 6.68) and insulin (RR, 2.73; 95% CI, 1.15 to 6.45) infusions. Additionally, there were more overrides in the pediatric compared to the adult population for the high-risk medications (RR, 1.82; 95% CI, 1.32 to 2.53). The number of serious adverse or sentinel events as identified in RCAs decreased from six before (four deemed preventable by AID technology) to three (zero preventable) after AID implementation.Conclusions: This study demonstrates that AID technology when properly used leads to reductions in medication errors and possibly serious ADEs in critically ill patients receiving high-risk medications. The technology appears to be particularly beneficial in pediatric patients with weight-based dosing strategies. However, the potential for clinicians to override the alerts remains a concern.