Assessment of the Practice of Storage, Labeling and Usage of Anesthetic Medications in the Operation Theatres of Selected Southern Ethiopian Hospitals: A Multicenter Descriptive Cross-Sectional Study

Background: The practice of anesthesiology needs an anesthetist to administer multiple potent drugs with high accuracy in a highly confined area that has multiple distractions. Despite all efforts, the increased use of technology, and high standards of both invasive and non-invasive monitoring in anesthesia practice, medication errors can still occur even at well-equipped centers worldwide. Methodology: A multicenter descriptive cross-sectional study using direct observations and interviews was done throughout the selected three hospitals to evaluate the practice of labeling, usage, and storage of anesthetic medications in the operation theatres. The data were confirmed, coded, and entered into SPSS version 25. Descriptive analysis was done. Narration and tables were used to present the findings, and results were explained in the form of frequencies and percentages. Results: Out of all the tools designed to assess the practice of labeling, usage, and storage of anesthetic medications in the operation theatres, none of the criteria was 100% accomplished. There is the highest accomplishment for the muscle relaxants labeling with 48 (80%) of the observations clearly labeling the muscle relaxants. It was observed that in all three centers the indicator for emergency drug labeling and other patient-specific drugs were below the average accomplishment. Only 5 (8.3%) of the interviewed anesthetists report medication-related incidents, while the majority of them did not report or incompletely report them. Conclusion and Recommendations: It is found that there were poor practices on most of the indicators for anesthetic drug storage, labeling, and usage in all sites as compared to the standards. Anesthesia practice must be understood as a high-risk activity that needs modified techniques and multimodal system redesign for a safe way to prepare and administer anesthesia drugs. The sample size for this study was small, and hence these findings should be dealt with caution and other studies with more sample size are recommended.