Adverse Drug Events and Contributing Factors Among Hospitalized Adult Patients at Jimma Medical Center, Southwest Ethiopia: A Prospective Observational Study.

BACKGROUND

Adverse drug events (ADEs) are common complications of clinical care resulting in significant morbidity, mortality, and high clinical expenditure. Population-level estimates of inpatient ADEs are limited in Ethiopia.

OBJECTIVE

This study aimed to assess the incidence, contributing factors, severity, and preventability of ADEs among hospitalized adult patients at Jimma Medical Center, Ethiopia.

METHODS

A prospective observational study design was conducted among hospitalized adult patients at tertiary hospital in Ethiopia. A structured data collection tool was prepared from relevant literatures for data collection. Data were analyzed using statistical software. Logistic regression was performed to identify factors contributing to ADE occurrence. values < 0.05 were considered statistically significant.

RESULTS

A total of 319 patients were included with follow-up period of 5667 person-days. About 50.5% were women. The mean (SD) age of patients was 43 (17.6) years. One hundred sixteen ADEs were identified with the incidence of 36.4 (95% CI, 30.1-43.6) per 100 admissions and 20.5 (95% CI, 16.9-24.6) per 1000 person-days. Antituberculosis agents (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] = 2.52; 95% CI, 1.06-5.98;  = 0.036), disease of the circulatory system (aOR = 2.67; 95% CI, 1.46-4.89;  = 0.001), disease of the digestive system (aOR = 2.84; 95% CI, 1.45-5.57;  = 0.002), being on medication during admission (aOR = 3.09; 95% CI, 1.77-5.41; < 0.001), and hospital stay more than 2 weeks (aOR = 3.93; 95% CI, 1.39-11.12;  = 0.010) were independent predictors of ADE occurrence.

CONCLUSIONS

One in every 4 patients admitted to the hospital experienced ADEs during their hospital stay. Most ADEs were moderate in severity. About two-thirds of the ADEs identified were deemed probably or definitely preventable. Therefore, it is high time to reinforce large-scale efforts to redesign safer, higher quality health care systems to adequately tackle the problem.