Online Program

Return to main conference page
Tuesday, January 7
Tue, Jan 7, 7:45 AM - 8:45 AM
Pacific D
Continental Breakfast & Poster Session II

Exploring Inpatient Medication Patterns: A Big Data and Multi-level Approach (307848)

*Figaro L Loresto, Children's Hospital Colorado 

Keywords: Electronic Health Record, Multilevel Models, Nursing

Purpose: Exploratory study to examine inpatient medication administration patterns. Methods: Data from multiple sources were utilized for this study. The outcome was time difference between medication schedule and administration. A three-level hierarchical linear regression approach, both unadjusted and adjusted, was considered for this study where medication administration events are nested with patients nested within nurses or units. Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) were calculated and compared. Results: On average medications were delayed by 12 minutes (SD: 48.8). From the full model, patient ICCs decreased when ‘unit’ replaced ‘nurse’ as the third level (0.541 vs. 0.444). Patients who spoke Spanish had a significant 2.3-4.2 minute delay in medication administration. Certified nurses significantly give medications earlier compared to non-certified nurses by 1.6 minutes. Discussion: Optimal medication administration is a multifactorial concern with nurses playing a role. But nursing leaders should also consider patient demographics and unit conditions, such as culture, for medication administration optimization.