1Department of Pediatrics www.pretx.org, BC Children's Hospital 2Department of Pediatrics, Royal Children’s Hospital 3Emergency Medicine, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles 4Emergency Medicine, Nationwide Children’s Hospital
Objective: Assess caregivers ability to recall and communicate medications their child was using in the week prior to bringing their child to an Emergency Department.
Methodology: Multicenter prospective face-to-face interview of caregivers of children in four hospitals in Canada, USA and Australia.
Results: A total of 1433 caregivers completed interviews in four academic pediatric EDs. The child’s primary care provider was interviewed in 1376(96%) cases. At least one medication was used by 965(67%) children in the previous week. Of the 2023 medication registrations during these interviews, 1089(54%) were over-the-counter (OTC) and 416(20.6%) were brought to the ED by the family. Seventy-eight caregivers (8% of caregivers with children on medications) had an up-to-date list of medications used. Of all medications, a medication side effect was known for 533 (26%) medications. Caregivers were able to provide a meaningful name of 1669(82%) medications and a meaningful name and dose of 987(49%) medications. A meaningful name, and meaningful name+dose combination were provided more often for prescription medications, compared to OTC medications (prescription medication name 838(91%), name and dose 563(60%); and OTC medications name 826(76%), name and dose 426(39%)). Families speaking English as a primary language at home were able to recall the name of a medication (1424, 84%) better than families that spoke another language at home (245,75%).
Conclusions Caregivers provide limited information regarding the medications used by their child in the previous week. This is especially true for those with English as a second language and those using OTC medications.
