Preventing Medication errors

Preventing Medication Errors:

According to Walter D. Glanze, medication errors in a hospital or clinical setting "continues to be a very serious problem for physicians and patients," especially when one considers that medication errors can lead to prolonged stays in a hospital or even death (2001, 134). In the Brief Report issued by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, "in any given week, four out of five U.S. adults will use prescription medicines" (2006, 1) or take over-the-counter medications, and most of the time, these medications do cause some harm to the person taking them. However, when a physician or a pharmacist makes an error related to prescribing the wrong medication, "adverse drug events (ADE's). . . are inevitable" and the more powerful the medication, the more likely that the patient will experience harmful side effects, possibly even death (2006, 1).

Therefore, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services requested that a study be done to discover how widespread these medication errors are in the U.S. And to set up a national agenda for reducing and/or preventing such errors. Overall, this study revealed that medication errors are quite common and in order to decrease the prevalence of these errors, "this will require changes from doctors, nurses (and) pharmacists in the health care industry," the FDA, other government agencies, health care organizations and of course from patients who must be more vigilant when taking their medication to assure that they are not mixing together medications which may exacerbate their conditions or possibly lead to death ("Preventing Medication Errors," 2006, 1).

Within this report by the Institute of Medicine, there are three specific recommendations which will hopefully lead to a decrease in medication errors on the part of physicians, nurses, pharmacists and other health care professionals. First of all, there must be a paradigm shift in the patient-provider relationship, one being to "allow and encourage patients to take a more active role in their own medical care" via some type of partnership between a patient and his/her physician. This could be accomplished by better communication via physicians "fully informing their patients about the risks, contraindications and possible side effects" of all medications ("Preventing Medication Errors," 2006, 2).