Question

Prevention of Medical Errors for Florida Healthcare Professionals is the subject!

Read the article assigned for this week’s reading and answer the following questions.

Submit your answers in an APA format summary.

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. Errors occur during the process of medication administration in patient care known as medication error.

b. High alert medications are drugs which produce life threating complications when wrongly administer

    to patient.(Eg:Insulin produce hypoglycemia and dizziness when administer to wrong patient).

c.Abbrevations used in drug therapy which may mistaken or consider different meaning result in danger

to patient.this are based on evidence from nurses,physicians and pharmacists who deal with drugs.

          Eg: Abbrevation              intended meaning          Error

                   SC                          Subcutaneous                Mistake as sublingual when written poorly.

                   HS                           Half strength                  Mistake as hour of sleep(latin abbrevation).

                   IU                           International unit              Mistaken as intravenous route in bad writting.

                  TIW                      Three times a week           Misinterpret as three times a day.

d.Drug names frequently confused

                 * Confused drug names are mainly in cases of look alike and sound alike medicines.

                     Example:1. CELEBREX and CEREBYX ( Brand names are similar so confusion occur)

                                     2. AMOXICILLIN and AMPICILLIN (They sound alike result in mistakes during

                                                                                                                                      drug selection).

e. Tall man lettering help to avoid chances of errors during administration of look alike and sound alike

    medicines in this part of drug name writing in upper case help the health care provider to avoid

    confusion and easy identification of drug when prepare for patient or during prescription.

                  Eg: Above mentioned 2 drugs can written as 1, celeBREX and cereBYX.