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Medication Errors In Hospitals
"The drug mistakes in hospitals are so common that any given patient will experience a medical error every day he or she stays there. Hospitals and long-term care facilities generally do not report errors to patients or family members unless they result in injury or death."—Institute of Medicine 2006 report, which was requested by the U.S. Congress
The hospital industry is well aware of these problems. This IOM report indicated that many have instituted an electronic monitoring system, but drug companies and vendors have created six distinct systems requiring different bar-code readers, making them a far less useful safety tool for hospitals. Among the most common medication errors that the American Hospital Association lists are:
Incomplete patient information or records: such as missing information about patients' allergies, other medicines they are taking, previous diagnoses, and lab results, etc;
Unavailable drug information: such as up-to-date warnings;
Miscommunication of drug orders: which can involve poor handwriting, confusion between drugs with similar names, misuse of zeroes and decimal points, confusion of metric and other dosing units, and inappropriate abbreviations;
Lack of appropriate labeling: usually when drug is prepared and repackaged into smaller units;
Environmental factors: including factors such as lighting, heat, noise, and interruptions, which can distract health professionals from their medical tasks.
Copyright © 2007 Janet, Jenner & Suggs, LLC, Attorneys At Law.
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The facts of every case are different and prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome on any particular case. Additional information and representative cases handled by Janet, Jenner & Suggs, LLC are available on www.MedLawLegalTeam.com