Improving management of intravenous maintenance fluids in the emergency department of a university hospital.

Objective: Intravenous (IV) fluid therapy is a known source of iatrogenic complications. Guideline implementation can be used to educate and guide physicians on adequate fluid management. In the emergency department (ED), a complex and interruption-driven environment, workload is high and active documentation is required to facilitate audits of fluid management quality.
Patients and Methods: Fluid management was evaluated in the ED records of adult non-critically ill patients admitted to a tertiary care center before (PRE: 1/12/2016-31/3/2017) and after (POST: 1/12/2018-31/3/2019) implementation of an educational intervention aiming to optimize IV fluid therapy in November 2018. First, the appropriateness of the 24-hour IV maintenance fluid prescription was evaluated, as prescribed by the emergency physician. Second, factors associated with appropriate prescribing were assessed, as well as the quality of fluid management documentation practice. Prescription appropriateness and documentation quality were evaluated retrospectively using a structured audit instrument and additional review by experts.
Results: A total of 237 patients (2.3%) were included in the PRE-intervention group and 253 patients (2.4%) in the POST-intervention group. The expert panel evaluated 214 prescriptions in 82.3% of patients (PRE: 99, POST: 115), and appropriateness increased significantly (19.2% vs. 61.2%, p=0.002). A higher odds of an appropriate IV maintenance fluid prescription was determined, attributed to the intervention (adjOR=2.580; 95% CI 1.363-4.884) and in patients having a prehospital intervention (adjOR=1.914, 95% CI 1.022-3.586). Appropriateness of fluid management documentation did not significantly improve after the implementation of the intervention (15.6% vs. 16.2%, p=0.858).
Conclusions: The IV fluid prescriptions' appropriateness was significantly higher after guideline implementation. However, documentation quality of fluid management was poor in the studied ED records. Active stewardship programs are warranted to further monitor fluid management quality in the ED.