| When you are being treated in a hospital or in any other healthcare organization, you have the right to expect that you will be given the correct medication in the proper dose at the proper time. However, the number of medication errors is increasing in recent years, and the problem has become a major health care concern. Even though the prescription and administrative of medication is a routine part of medical, nursing, and pharmaceutical practice, deviations from proper practice have the potential to severely injury or even kill an unwary patient.
One of the main reasons for medication errors is the difficulty in accurately reading and interpreting physicians' handwritten orders. Direct physician computer order entry is not universally available in hospitals, and nurses waste a great deal of staff time trying to interpret poorly handwritten orders. Well written orders are also subject to misinterpretation because of the variations in the shape of the characters and loops and tails that extend above or below the word. These variations potentially interfere with the interpretation of another word or symbol or with the proper reading of a decimal point.
Another reason for medication errors is the use of confusing abbreviations. The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, which accredits hospitals, nursing homes, and many other facilities, provides organizations under its umbrella with a list of dangerous abbreviations, and it is working towards one hundred percent compliance with its comprehensive list of prohibited dangerous abbreviations, acronyms, and symbols. In addition, each organization must create an additional list of "do not use" items. These items should not be used in any form - capitalized or lower case, with or without periods. The list applies to all forms of handwritten, patient-specific documentation and also preprinted forms.
In pursuing a malpractice claim against a hospital arising from a medication error, attorneys usually request a copy of this "do not use" list to determine if the misinterpreted error contains one of the "do not use" items. If the order contains a prohibited item, it is important to determine if there is documentation that the order was clarified or confirmed with the ordering physician before it was carried out. Copyright 2010 LexisNexis, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. |