Discharge Medication Counseling in Hospitalized Children

Overview

Our objective is to design and test the efficacy of a health-literacy-informed discharge medication counseling intervention in the inpatient setting to reduce medication dosing errors and improve adherence in hospitalized children discharged on a new liquid medication.

The goal of this research is to improve discharge medication adherence and reduce medication dosing errors following pediatric hospitalization. Medication errors are one of the most common healthcare-associated adverse events in pediatrics, with approximately one out-of-hospital medication error occurring every 8 minutes among children \< 6 years of age. Liquid medications account for the majority of pediatric dosing errors which is likely due to liquid medications' inherent dosing complexities, including the need for weight-based dosing, different concentrations of medications, and parental use of unstandardized dosing instruments. The increased stress and exhaustion that many caregivers experience during a hospitalization, coupled with the need to assimilate large amounts of information pertaining to post-discharge care, makes transitioning to home from an inpatient stay a particularly high risk period for medication errors. Communication challenges, particularly failure to consider caregiver health literacy, further compounds the risk for medication errors due to poor caregiver comprehension and adherence to discharge instructions.

Conditions

Interventions

Eligibility

Locations (1)

Outcomes