Planning for the inevitable: Medication errors

Medication errors: the human factor.

Introduction to medication errors and medication safety

A medication safety incident is defined by the National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) as: ‘any unintended or unexpected incident which could have or did lead to harm for one or more patients’ (NPSA, 2007:9). These incidents can occur at each stage of the process involved in the delivery of medicines to patients, i.e. prescribing (including transcribing or physician ordering), dispensing, prepara...

Medication Errors Are Preventable

The National Coordinating Council for Medication Error Reporting and Prevention (NCC MERP) defines a "medication error" as "any preventable event that may cause or lead to inappropriate medication use or patient harm while the medication is in the control of the health care professional, patient, or consumer. At many occasions a medication error can be caught or is rectified before its administ...

Reducing medication errors.

© 2000 Canadian Medical Association or its licensors Public concern regarding medication errors was heightened by the recent death of infant Trevor Landry from a narcotic overdose in a Toronto-area hospital. This case involved the mistaken administration of morphine instead of meperidine postoperatively. A colleague and I reported a near-fatal medication error during general anesthesia that res...

A Probabilistic Model for Reducing Medication Errors

BACKGROUND Medication errors are common, life threatening, costly but preventable. Information technology and automated systems are highly efficient for preventing medication errors and therefore widely employed in hospital settings. The aim of this study was to construct a probabilistic model that can reduce medication errors by identifying uncommon or rare associations between medications and...