Medical errors

In the time it will take you to read this editorial, eight patients will be injured, and one will die, because of preventable medical errors.

Medication error — wrong drug, wrong dose, wrong route of administration, wrong patient, or wrong time — is the most common single preventable cause of patient injury.

When all sources of error are added up, the likelihood that a mishap will injure a patient in the hospital is at least 3%, and probably much higher.

This is a serious public health problem.

When one considers that a typical airline handles customers’ baggage at a far lower error rate than we handle the administration of drugs to patients, it is also an embarrassment.
Font: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1070906/