Hospital drug errors far from uncommon
Rong-Gong Lin II and Teresa Watanabe
Los Angeles Times
The case of actor Dennis Quaid's newborn twins, who were reportedly given 1,000 times the intended dosage of a blood thinner at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, underscores one of the biggest problems facing the healthcare industry: medication errors.
At least 1.5 million Americans a year are injured after receiving the wrong medication or the incorrect dose, according to the Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academies of Science. Such incidents have more than doubled in the last decade.
The errors are made when pharmacists stock the drugs improperly, nurses don't double-check to make sure they are dispensing the proper medication or doctors' bad handwriting results in the wrong drug being administered, among other causes.
November 22, 2007 at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Blog Reactions
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