Kentucky and Ohio patients may be interested in knowing that most medication errors occur during the administration phase. And a recent study has shown that more than one-third of such errors involved the giving of medication intravenously.
Patient safety organizations have stressed that every medical provider should implement a system or protocol that would prevent such errors from occurring to begin with. This would include strategies such as leadership support, evaluation of the way medications are administered, an assessment concerning the likelihood of risk, and other miscellaneous strategies.
The Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI) has come up with a number of such strategies that are felt would reduce the risk of medication errors from occurring. These would include:
- Adopting the use of infusion pumps for the administration of intravenous medications that contain dose error reduction systems
- Make such infusion pumps standardized so that medical providers become familiar with use
- Limit the uses of infusion pumps to particular medication concentrations
- Limit the use of such pumps to emergency situations
Many such medication errors tend to be routine in nature, and that’s why such strategies may be helpful. Without procedures put in place to check and double-check the amounts of medication that are being administered, too often, patients either overdose on such medications or do not receive sufficient amounts of medication to counter their afflictions.
Patients who have been injured due to medication errors may wish to contact medical malpractice attorneys experienced in trying such cases. Such attorneys can hold medical providers liable and hopefully force such providers to implement various safety measures to prevent medication errors from occurring.
Source: Becker’s Hospital Review, “Administration Errors Most Common Type of Error During Medication Process,” by Jamie Oh, May 8, 2012