OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of selected ready-to-administer prefilled sterile syringes (PFSs) in reducing time of medication administration in critically ill pediatric patients in the emergency department (ED) of tertiary care hospital, Karachi, Pakistan.

METHODS: This was a quasi-experimental study done on the quality project from July 2017 to Sept 2017 in the Emergency Department of a tertiary care hospital of Karachi, Pakistan. This project was implemented by adopting PDSA methodology. In this study, mean reduction in IV medication administration time was studied. Three most frequently used peads emergency medications were selected in particular strengths for the pilot as ready-to-administer prefilled sterile syringes i-e magnesium sulphate syringe 5mg/2ml, 3% hypertonic saline 150 ml piggyback, and paracetamol syring 200mg/20ml. Pre and post intervention data was collected and analyzed inferentially in SPSS by using paired sample t-test.

RESULTS: The mean reduction in dose administration time from 156 seconds to 34.5 seconds (95% CI, 112.9 to 129.4) for magnesium sulphate syringe 5meq/2ml and mean reduction in dose administration time from 304 seconds to 45 seconds (95% CI, 236.4 to 281.4) for paracetamol syring 200mg/20ml was observed. Inferentially the mean reduction in time was significant i.e.p<0.05 after implementing both prefilled syringes.

CONCLUSIONS: Implementing ready-to-administer sterile prefilled syringes in peads emergency patients not only significantly reduces the medication administration time but it is also a good strategy to enhance patient safety in pediatric population. It has a potential to improve throughput in Emergency department. Therefore, prefilled sterile syringes use should be routinely employed.