Effects of interdisciplinary collaboration in hospitals on medication errors: an integrative review

INTRODUCTION: Medication errors are commonly affected by breakdowns in communication. Interdisciplinary collaboration is an important means of facilitating communication between health professionals in clinical practice. To date, there has been little systematic examination of past research in this area. Areas covered: The aims of this integrative review are to examine how interdisciplinary collaboration influences medication errors in hospitals, the araes of interdisciplinary collaboration that have been researched in previous work, and recommendations for future research and practice. An integrative review was undertaken of research papers (N = 30) published from inception to August 2017 using MEDLINE, the Cochrane Library, CINAHL, PsycINFO, and Embase. Expert opinion: Five different areas of interdisciplinary collaboration were identified in research involving medication errors. These areas were: communication through tools including guidelines, protocols, and communication logs; participation of pharmacists in interdisciplinary teams; collaborative medication review on admission and at discharge; collaborative workshops and conferences; and complexity of role differentiation and environment. Despite encouraging results demonstrated in past research, medication errors continued to occur. Increased focus is needed on developing tailored, individualized strategies that can be applied in particular contexts to create further reductions in medication errors. Greater understandings are also needed about the changing roles of various disciplines.