Acessibilidade / Reportar erro

Investigation of medication administration through catheters in intensive care

Investigación de la técnica de administración de medicaciones por cateteres en terapia intensiva

This study aims to identify errors in medication administration through probes and characterize the interruption or not of nutrition in the case of drugs that require relative fasting. This is an epidemiological, cross-sectional and observational study in intensive care with a sample of 350 doses of drugs administered by 56 nursing technicians. The results showed no pause between the drug administration and the infusion of enteral feeding in 116 (33.14%) doses of drugs that required relative fasting, including captopril, sodic warfarin, sodic levothyroxine, sodic digoxin and sodic phenytoin. The irrigation of probes did not occur (94.28%) in most cases. It is concluded that the serum bioavailability of the drugs mentioned may have been reduced, compromising their therapeutic efficacy; and that the lack of probe irrigation with sterile water before administering drugs shows the absence of a specific and fundamental care to prevent probe clogging.

Medication error; Nursing; Security measures


Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Programa de Pós Graduação em Enfermagem Campus Universitário Trindade, 88040-970 Florianópolis - Santa Catarina - Brasil, Tel.: (55 48) 3721-4915 / (55 48) 3721-9043 - Florianópolis - SC - Brazil
E-mail: textoecontexto@contato.ufsc.br