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September 2, 2026Intensive Care Medicine – Paediatric and NeonatalOpen Access

Approach to the prevention of medication errors using electronic barriers in PICU and NICU: an ESPNIC survey

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Authors

ATAnna TessariSWSaskia N. de WildtEBEmanuele Buccione

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Overview

Cross-sectional survey reveals incomplete adoption of electronic medication safety tools in pediatric and neonatal intensive care units, indicating urgent need for standardized closed-loop systems.

Key Points

  • Evaluate the availability of health information technologies for medication safety, assess perceived implementation barriers, and examine incident-reporting infrastructure across European pediatric and neonatal intensive care units.
  • Conducted a multicenter, cross-sectional survey using a 48-item questionnaire developed by the ESPNIC Pharmacology Section and distributed across 38 European countries.
  • Analyzed survey responses from one clinician per unit across 143 neonatal and pediatric intensive care units in 21 countries (40% response rate) between October 2022 and April 2023.
  • Electronic medication safety systems were used in 58% of intensive care units, with smart pumps (56%) and computerized physician order entry (47.6%) being the most prevalent.
  • Tool adoption was highest in the prescribing phase (81.9%), followed by administration (50.6%), drug distribution (42.2%), and preparation (32.5%), with cost (85.3%) and organizational challenges (63.6%) acting as primary barriers.
  • Incident reporting systems existed in 66% of surveyed units, but regular incident reviews occurred in only 49%.

Cite This Study

Tessari et al. (2026) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/6a97e2f6c562ede874ec76aehttps://doi.org/10.1007/s44253-026-00137-1
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Also Consider

Synapse has enriched 5 closely related papers on similar clinical questions. Consider them for comparative context:

  1. 1Medication safety strategies in European adult, paediatric, and neonatal intensive care units: a cross-sectional survey2024 · 2 citations
  2. 2Assessing medication safety culture in Norwegian pediatric wards: a first nationwide survey2026
  3. 3Medical error in neonatal units: an Italian survey on national frequency and types of error2026
  4. 45PSQ-049 Medication prescribing errors prospective observational study in an Intensive Care Unit2024
  5. 5Patient safety culture and medication safety in European intensive care units: a focus group study2024