Effects of Implementing Standardized Organizational Interventions on Drug Therapy Management (DTM): A Quasi-Experimental Study

SUMMARY:Background. Interruptions occurring during the drug preparation and administration have a documented effect on patients' safety. However, literature has paid little attention to show how the introduction of a set of standardized organizational interventions, based on the combination of the current evidence, could reduce the number of interruptions occurring during drug therapy management. For this reason, this study used the most recent evidence to combine a set of standardized organizational interventions, and it was aimed to assess the effect of those interventions on the number of interruptions occurring during drug therapy management (Hypothesis a) and the overall duration of the therapy administration (Hypothesis b). Methods. A quasi-experimental study was performed, using pre- and a post- organizational implementation data collections in a single Italian center. The data collections were related to the interruptions and 40 shifts were randomly selected for both pre- and post-phase, respectively on December 2016 and February 2017. The standardized organizational interventions were implemented using the current evidence on this topic. Results. The standardized organizational interventions decreased the interruptions in the post-implementation phase, but those had not an effect on the duration of the therapy administration. Conclusions. This study represented an updated evidence, which describes the effect of a standardized and evidence-based set of organisational interventions' implementation on drug therapy management. Our results suggest a number of hints for managers and future researches. Managers should keep into account the usefulness of those interventions, while future researches with experimental designs are needed to provide harder evidence on this topic.