The Wrong Drug, The Wrong Dose

By David Bjerklie

We learn from our mistakes only if we admit we're making them. And it appears that the medical community is increasingly stepping forward to do just that, according to U.S. Pharmacopeia's fourth annual report of hospital medication errors. In the first year of this voluntary (and anonymous) reporting system, 56 hospitals reported slightly more than 40,000 snafus. This year 500 hospitals came forward with 192,000 admissions of error. USP's database now lists more than 500,000 cases in which the wrong drug or wrong dose was prescribed (for example, a blood-pressure drug given to a patient who needed an antidepressant) or the proper treatment was administered the wrong way (say, by IV instead of feeding tube). The private nonprofit organization expects its database to approach 1 million cases next year.

The ultimate goal of the reporting system is to identify patterns of errors so they can be prevented. This year's report found that seniors suffer the most from hospitals' mistakes. Patients ages 65 and older accounted for more than a third of all medication errors and 55% of fatal errors.

--By David Bjerklie