Abstract
Background: Direct oral anticoagulants (DOACs) have become preferable for the management of thromboembolic events. Recent publications have however identified high volume of medication errors related to DOACs. There is limited literature on why and how such errors occur or happen in clinical practice.
Aim: This study aimed to explore views, experiences, contributory factors related to DOACs medication errors from the perspectives of healthcare professionals.
Method: Semi-structured interviews using online videoconferencing were conducted with physicians and nurses from tertiary care hospitals in three different regions in Saudi Arabia. Questions included views, experiences and perceived factors contributing to errors. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and were thematically analyzed using MAXQDA Analytics Pro 2020 (VERBI Software).
Results: The semi-structured interviews (n = 34) included physicians (n = 20) and nurses (n = 14) until data saturation was achieved. The analysis identified five themes: Factors related to healthcare professionals (e.g. knowledge, confidence and access to guidelines); Factors related to patients (e.g. comorbidity, polypharmacy, medication review, and communication barriers); Factors related to organization (e.g. guidelines, safety culture and incidents reporting system); Factors related to the DOACs medications (e.g. lack of availability of antidotes and dosing issues); and Strategies for error prevention/mitigation (e.g. the need for professional training and routine medication review).
Conclusion: Healthcare professionals identified errors in relation to DOACs as multifactorial including their own and patient lack of knowledge, lack of clinical guidelines and organizational factors including safety culture. Medication review and reconciliation on discharge were key strategies suggested to reduce DOACs related errors. These strategies support the role of pharmacists as direct patients care providers to minimize DOACs errors.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1057-1066 |
Number of pages | 10 |
Journal | International Journal of Clinical Pharmacy |
Volume | 44 |
Issue number | 4 |
Early online date | 22 Jun 2022 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | E-pub ahead of print - 22 Jun 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:AA was sponsored by the Saudi Ministry of Education for the PhD programme. No other funding was received for the conduct of this study.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s).
Keywords
- DOACs
- Direct oral anticoagulants
- Healthcare professionals
- Medication errors
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Pharmacy
- Toxicology
- Pharmacology
- Pharmaceutical Science
- Pharmacology (medical)