Discharge Medication Counseling in Hospitalized Children

Vanderbilt University Medical Center

Status: Completed

Conditions: Medication Management

Treatments: Behavioral: Medication counseling

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT05143047

8194

Details and patient eligibility

About

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.

Full description

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.

Enrollment: 198 patients

Sex: All

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Caregivers of children up to 6 years old who are hospitalized on a general inpatient hospital medicine teams
• Caregivers must speak English or Spanish
• Participants' children must be discharged home on new scheduled liquid medication for minimum 3 days.

Exclusion criteria

• Medication will be administered by home health nurse
• Child is in state/protected custody
• Medication prescription is prescribed to pharmacy other than hospital outpatient pharmacy

Trial design

Primary purpose: Health Services Research

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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198 participants in 2 patient groups

Control

No Intervention group

Description:

Participants in the usual care group will receive standard-of-care discharge communications per unit routine, including counseling regarding prescribed medications and post-discharge instructions, return precautions, and follow-up appointments by the pediatric nursing staff.

Intervention

Experimental group

Description:

Participants in the intervention group will receive supplementary medication discharge instructions in addition to the standard communications. They will receive instructions on how to submit information and complete study surveys securely through their cellphones during their child's home treatment period.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Medication counseling