Describing voluntarily reported fluid therapy incidents in the care of critically ill patients: Identifying, and learning from, points of risk at the national level

Background Fluid therapy is a common intervention in critically ill patients. Fluid therapy errors may cause harm to patients. Thus, understanding of reported fluid therapy incidents is required in order to learn from them and develop protective measures, including utilizing expertise of pharmacists and technology to improve patient safety at the national level. Objectives To describe fluid therapy incidents voluntarily reported in intensive care and high dependency units (ICUs) to a national incident reporting system, by investigating the error types, fluid products, consequences to patients and actions taken to alleviate them, and to identify at which phase of the medication process the incidents had occurred and had been detected. Methods Medication related voluntarily reported incident (n = 7623) reports were obtained from all ICUs in 2007–2017. Incidents concerning fluid therapy (n = 2201) were selected. The retrospective analysis utilized categorized data and narrative descriptions of the incidents. The results were expressed as frequencies and percentages. Results Most voluntarily reported incidents had occurred during the dispensing/preparing phase (n = 1306, 59%) of the medication process: a point of risk. Most incidents (n = 1975, 90%) had reached the patient and passed through many phases in the medication process and nursing shift change checks before detection. One third of the errors (n = 596, 30%) were reported to have caused consequences to patients. One quarter (n = 492, 25%) of the errors were reported to have required an additional procedure to alleviate or monitor the consequences. Conclusions Utilizing national incident report data enabled identifying systemic points of risk in the medication process and learning to improve patient safety. To prevent similar incidents, initial interventions should focus on the dispensing/preparing phase before implementing active medication identification procedures at each phase of the medication process and nursing shift changes. Strengthening clinical pharmacy services, utilizing technology, coordinated by IV Fluid Coordinators and Medication Safety Officers, could improve patient safety in the ICUs.