Medication Errors Found in 1 Out of 2 Surgeries
October 29th, 2015Via: Harvard:
The first study to measure the incidence of medication errors and adverse drug events during the perioperative period — immediately before, during and right after a surgical procedure — has found that some sort of mistake or adverse event occurred in every second operation and in 5 percent of observed drug administrations.
The study of more than 275 operations at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), which will appear in Anesthesiology, also found that a third of the errors resulted in adverse drug events or harm to patients. The report is being published online to coincide with a presentation at the Anesthesiology 2015 annual meeting in San Diego, Calif., Oct. 24-28.
“We found that just over one in 20 perioperative medication administrations resulted in a medication error or an adverse drug event,” said Karen C. Nanji of the MGH Department of Anaesthesia, Critical Care, and Pain Medicine, lead author of the report.
“Prior to our study, the literature on perioperative medication error rates was sparse and consisted largely of self-reported data, which we know under-represents true error rates. Now that we have a better idea of the actual rate and causes of the most common errors, we can focus on developing solutions to address the problems.
