[Potential for optimization in nursing documentation].

OBJECTIVE: To validate an instrument for documentation of clinical pharmacy interventions in French speaking hospitals in France and outside of France. METHOD: A panel of 12 French speaking clinical pharmacists (six from France; six from French speaking countries) was asked to analyse a set of 60 pharmacist's interventions on drug prescription. They used a form including (1) the identification of the drug related problems (DRPs) (10 items), (2) the pharmacist's intervention (7 items). We assessed the level of agreement between the 12 pharmacists on the test DRPs and on the interventions. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Kappa coefficient of concordance was used to assess the level of agreement between experts for DRPs and interventions. We also assessed the userfriendliness of the instrument using Likert scales. RESULTS: The level of concordance observed in the validation was 0.76 for DRPs and 0.89 for the type of intervention. Eleven experts out of 12 were "very satisfied" or "satisfied" and one "not satisfied" with the tool. Ten out of the 12 experts were ready to use it in daily practise. CONCLUSION: The present instrument proposed by the French Society of Clinical Pharmacy (SFPC) is the first coding system for pharmacist's interventions with a French interface. The validation process using a standard statistical methodology helps support the external validity of our tool. The level of concordance between users can be considered as satisfactory, allowing the use of the tool in daily clinical pharmacy practise. To enhance the diffusion of the instrument and of the general process of routine documentation of interventions, a spreadsheet is provided on the French Society of Clinical Pharmacy website.

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PubMed2006

Design and implementation of an ICU incident registry.

Due to its complexity intensive care is vulnerable to errors. On the ICU adults of the AMC (Amsterdam, The Netherlands) the available registries used for error reporting did not give insight in the occurrence of unwanted events, and did not lead to preventive measures. Therefore, a new registry has been developed on the basis of a literature study on the various terms and definitions that refer to unintended events, and on the methods to register and monitor them. As this registry intends to provide an overall insight into errors, a neutral term ('incident') -- which does not imply guilt or blame -- has been sought together with a broad definition. The attributes of an incident further describe the unwanted event, but they should not form an impediment for the ICU nurses and physicians to report. The properties of a registry that contribute to making it accessible and user friendly have been determined. This has resulted in an electronic registry where incidents can be reported rapidly, voluntarily, anonymously and free of legal consequences. Evaluation is required to see if the new registry indeed provides the ICU management with the intended information on the current situation on incidents. For further refinement of the design, additional development and adjustments are required. However, we expect that the awareness of errors of the ICU personnel has already improved, forming the first step to increased patient safety.

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