Medication Errors in the Emergency Department: Need for Pharmacy Involvement?

Of all care areas mentioned in medication error reports submitted from August 1, 2009, through July 31, 2010, to the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority, the emergency department (ED) is the third most commonly mentioned, appearing in 6% of all medication error reports. The predominant medication error event types in the ED include wrong dose/ overdosage, drug omission, and wrong drug. The predominant classes of drugs mentioned in wrong-dose/overdosage error reports include antibiotics, steroids, anticoagulants/antithrombotics, opioids, and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory agents. Possible risk reduction strategies include expanding the role of the pharmacy department in the ED’s medication-use process, limiting the number and variety of medications and concentrations available in the ED, and incorporating redundancies (e.g., order read-back) throughout the medicationuse process. (Pa Patient Saf Advis 2011 Mar;8[1]:1-7.) R E V I E W S & A N A LY S E S