Archives of Internal Medicine: “A total of 14 411 patients (60.7%) were exposed to acetaminophen, of whom 955 (6.6%) exceeded the 4 g per day maximum recommended dose. In addition, 22.3% of patients who were 65 years or older and 17.6% of patients with chronic liver diseases exceeded the recommended limit of 3 g per… Read More »
medGadget: “Typenex Medical, a Chicago, Illinois company, has created a solution that pretty much eliminates the possibility for errors. The system utilizes a combination lock on the blood bag that will only open using a code printed on the patient’s armband. If a clinician accidentally attempts to open the bag using another patient’s code, it… Read More »
Things just keep getting worse: death toll rose to 14 and people affected was up to 172 in 11 states as of this afternoon. It’s difficult to find accurate information on the exact cause of the meningitis, but it appears that most of the cases are related to either Aspergillus or Exserohilum. Fungal infections are… Read More »
I’m sure you’ve heard about the recent meningitis outbreak tied to a contaminated batch of preservative-free methylprednisolone acetate. The story has received significant attention as more that 100 people have been sickened and as many as eight have died as a result of receiving an injection of the contaminated steroid (this data is already out of date… Read More »
A trip to the local IHOP (@IHOP) this morning for breakfast with my family reminded me of something I saw a couple a weeks ago and this post about the use of color in pharmacy labels. It’s a big of a stretch, I know, but the things that pop into one’s mind aren’t necessarily controlled by logic.
You know how websites make you double enter your email address and password when you sign up for a service? Well, apparently that’s not a bad system for making sure you have the right patient during order entry. You’d think we would have figured that out a while back, but then again this is healthcare… Read More »
From the latest ISMP Medication Safety Alert!, a mix up between an adult parenteral nutrition (PN) template in an electronic health record (#EHR) and one for pediatrics. The big difference between these two is how you order electrolytes; it’s a really big difference. The most shocking part of all this was that the error made… Read More »
Everyone has seen them, I know you have. Those little colored labels that the pharmacy slaps on your bottle when you get a prescription: “May cause drowsiness”, “Avoid excess sun”, “Do not take aspirin products without doctor approval” and so on. There are a ton of them. I remember seeing them lined up in front… Read More »
The article below appeared in the March 2012 edition of Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety – yes, that’s a real journal. I couldn’t make this stuff up – Anyway, there’s nothing new here, we all know that ADEs are expensive. How expensive? Well, the bottom line is that “ADEs were associated with an increased adjusted… Read More »
There’s a little blurb in the March 2012 issue of Pharmacy Times about the dangers of using inappropriate abbreviations in prescriptions. The author gives a couple of good examples where the use of abbreviations resulted in errors. I’ve seen my fair share of crappy handwriting and liberal use of abbreviations during my career, and I almost always read… Read More »