Decreasing Medication Errors by Caregivers Using a Health Literacy Intervention

Dosing error rates of home administration of medications to children have been reported to be as high as 50%. Contributing to this error rate are the complexity of pediatric weight-based dosing, confusing formulations of liquid medications, and a reliance on non-standardized dosing tools such as kitchen teaspoons and tablespoons to administer medications. Families with low health literacy are at particular risk for medication administration errors. Health literacy promoting interventions to improve medication administration such as dissemination of a pictogram-based medication list have been shown to work for common over-the-counter medications such as acetaminophen, but their effect on administration practices for common medications prescribed in the pediatric emergency department (PED) has not been evaluated. Of the 50,000 patients seen in the PED each year, approximately 85% of patients are discharged with a prescription for medication. This makes the PED an ideal setting to implement a health literacy intervention to reduce medication administration errors at home. The investigators are proposing to conduct a randomized controlled trial of an educational module focused on how to administer antibiotics at home and test whether there is an improvement in care practices.