Question

a. What is the definition of a medication error?

b. What are "high-alert" medications?

c. What abbreviations are dangerous? Are these evidence based?

d. What drug names are frequently confused?

e. How should tall man lettering be applied to differentiate look-alike/soundalike drug names?

Answer 1

a. Medications errors are mistakes of drug treatment which may result in fatal outcomes in patient.

b. High-Alert medications are drugs which produce severe complications when any error occur during

    administration.(eg:Insulin,amiodarone,epinephrine,proponolol etc).

c.Some abbrevations make confusion in health care provider because of misinterpretation and

   mistakes when using it examples are

     * IU is the abbrevation for international unit but it may mistaken as IV route.

   * HS is half strength can be misinterpreted as hours of sleep which is a

latin abbrevation.

   * SC is subcutaneous if hand writting is not good it may read as sublingual.

* This type abbrevations are considering dangerous based on the rate of errors happening in the

   hospital because of wrong use of this abbrevations.

d. Drug names of look alike and sound alike medicines are confusing health care provider during

   prescription and administraton.

                example: Acetohexamide and Azetozolamide are sound alike medicines confusion occur

                                  during administration.

                               * Dopamine and Dobutamine are look alike medicines so confusion occur during

                                 administration.

e.Tall man lettering is really necessery in case of look alike and sound alike medicines because it

   make easy understanding and avoid errors during prescription and administration.it applied by

giving capital letters in between drugs name.

        example: DOBUTamine and DOPamine.

                       TOLBUTamide and TOLAZamide.

                        vinCRIStine and vinBLAStine.