Criteria for medicines management in hospitals

Författare

Tommy Eriksson
Lars-Åke Söderlund
Malin Alenius

Summary, in English

Study objectives:

The aim of this study was to develop quality criteria for further development and use in the Medicines Management(MM) process in European hospitals.

Methods:

Criteria for MM were developed in three steps using a modified two-stage Delphi-technique. In the first step a literature

search was performed and 300 topics were listed. These topics were grouped into three dimensions, eight main and 23 sub areas,

rephrased and a questionnaire including 114 criteria that could be perceived as important today and in the near future was prepared.

In steps 2 and 3 a panel of experts independently, based on questionnaires, evaluated the importance between the dimensions,

areas, and criteria on a four-level Likert-scale. In the second questionnaire the panel had access to the group results from the first

questionnaire. Total importance and the three domains of patient safety, environment, and cost-effectiveness were evaluated.

Results:

Nine of 11 experts completed the two questionnaires. The three dimensions of patient use, healthcare handling, and strategic MM work, were well balanced and the importance ratings between them were 35, 39, and 26%, respectively. No criteria had a full mean importance of 4 but 31 criteria scored between 3.6 and 3.9. The patient safety domain importance scores were generally very high and the environmental domain low. Five criteria were considered to be of very big importance among all experts in the patient safety domain and none in the other two domains.

Conclusion:

This study provides important information on criteria for the further development of standards and indicators for a quality system in hospital settings, High Performance Medicines Management (HPMM).

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