Dive Brief:
- A study conducted at Massachusetts General Hospital discovered a medication error or adverse drug event in 124 out of 277 surgery operations conducted over a 7-month period between 2013 and 2014.
- There were 193 medication errors or adverse events out of 3,675 medication administrations, with close to 80% of those events deemed preventable and 64.7% were serious and 2% were life-threatening.
- Medication mistakes included drug labeling errors, incorrect dosing, drug documentation errors, and/or failing to properly treat changes in a patient's vital signs during surgery.
Dive Insight:
Dr. Karen Nanji, study lead author and assistant professor of anesthesia at Harvard Medical School, said, "These rates are markedly higher than those reported by retrospective surveys. Specific solutions exist that have the potential to decrease the incidence of perioperative medication errors."
Although hospitals have established rigorous safety checks regarding medication administration, the study authors noted the surgical environment often involves sudden changes in circumstances that require quick decisions and immediate action. Although no patients died due to drug errors, 66% of the errors were "serious" and 2% life-threatening.
The Institute of Medicine first reported on medical error deaths in 1999, which kicked off a large-scale healthcare focus on error reduction. However, as previously reported in Healthcare Dive, a 2013 independent study has shown no progress on reducing errors and over 200,000 people die every year from preventable medical mistakes.