Track: Healthcare Operations and Services

Abstract

Pediatric intensive care units are prone to a variety of errors and risks. Failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) is a risk assessment and management method that evaluates the safety of patient care processes. The current study aimed to identify and assess common medical errors in the pediatric intensive care unit (PCICU) at a cardiac pediatric centre in Egypt and identify the highest risk probability number (RPN), its root causes as well as recommended solutions. This descriptive analytic applied research was conducted from September 2022 to January 2023 in the PCICU of a Cardiac pediatric Centre in Upper Egypt to identify and assess medical errors and their effects qualitatively and quantitatively using FMEA through direct observations of the PCICU processes, brainstorming, interviews and focus group discussions. For data collection, the FMEA standard worksheet was used to a purposive sample of 10 experts whose years of experience are more than 5 years. In this study, 3 key processes were selected: drug administration, infection control, and laboratory tests; 13 activities and 20 potential failure modes, as well as their impacts were detected and recorded in the final worksheet of FMEA. According to the calculated PRNs, 8 potential failure modes with PRN > 65 were determined as high-risk failures. As a result, it is suggested that senior PCICU staff, doctors and senior managers establish and promote a safety culture by forming multidisciplinary patient safety teams at the organizational and unit levels.