Hospitals in the United States

In one inform cited by the above authors, the defective choice or wrong dose of a drug caused at least half of the adverse drug reactions. Errors at the doctor-ordering stage can be greatly reduced by the use of computers (AMA, 1997). Computer programs barge in data on individual patient ofs and can alert the physician to such things as previous adverse reactions to a medication, other(a) medications the patient is currently taking which may interact with the drug being prescribed, and can alert a physician to dosage errors. It has been estimated that up to 85 percent of medication errors and half of wholly medication injuries could be prevented by the use of computers (Cowley, 1995).

Nurse-administering errors occur for a number of reasons, including fatigue from working long hours, memory lapses, figure of speech packaging and sound-alike names of medications (Cowley, 1995).

A review of 10 incidents of patient death resulting from misadministration of potassium chloride showed that eight were the result of direct extract of concentrated potassium chloride according to the Sentinel Event Alert, (1998). In six of the eight cases, potassium chloride was mistaken for some other medication, primarily due to similarities in packaging and labeling. The most shop problem was mistaking potassium chloride for sodium chloride, he

Voelker, R. (1996, November 20). "Treat systems, not errors" experts say. JAMA. pp. 1537-1538.

Smith, J. (1995, September). Preventing medication errors. Nursing Homes. pp. 22-23.

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