THE IMPACT OF INTERPROFESSIONAL PRACTICE ON REDUCING DIAGNOSTIC AND MEDICATION ERRORS IN NEONATAL AND ADULT CRITICAL CARE UNITS
Keywords:
Interprofessional practice; patient safety; diagnostic errors; medication errors; critical care; neonatal intensive care; adult intensive care; multidisciplinary collaboration; healthcare quality improvementAbstract
Interprofessional practice aims to improve diagnostic and medication safety in neonatal and adult critical care units. Diagnostic safety prioritises the avoidance of misdiagnosis, while medication safety focuses on the prevention of medication errors during prescribing, dispensing, and administration. Interprofessional practice—defined as a collaborative approach among different professional disciplines—commonly deploys structured team-based models. These models establish clear team roles, multidisciplinary communication protocols, and routine team-based activities, fostering improved collaboration and patient safety across a diverse range of clinical settings (A. Alghamdi et al., 2021).
Critical care professionals operate within complex and constrained environments while managing the diagnosis and treatment of life-threatening conditions across the paediatric-to-adult spectrum. Collaboration among professional disciplines has significant potential to enhance both diagnostic and medication safety, particularly in neonatal and adult intensive care units (ICUs) where the consequences of error can be severe. In care teams targeting high-acuity patients, interprofessional practice is predicted to act directly on diagnostic and medication workflows, amplifying collaboration among disciplines already involved and strengthening teamwork environments. These combined influences are anticipated to improve safety in the detection, monitoring, and classification of patient signals, foster shared comprehension of these signals and their evolution, and ensure that collective and individual signals drive timely, appropriate interventions.
