Medication Safety
Report: Most Medication Errors Do Not Harm Patients
More than 98 percent of medication errors don't harm patients, according to the United States Pharmacopeia's (USP) report on the 192,477 errors reported in 2002 to its voluntary MEDMARX database. Nearly half (49 percent) the errors reported by 405 hospitals and 77 outpatient centers are categorized as near-misses - wrong medications, doses or formulations that are spotted shortly before reaching the patient. Other findings:

• The most common errors are omission (25.6 percent), in which a correctly prescribed medication doesn't reach the patient, and wrong dosage or quantity (25.5 percent). Next is wrong prescription (18.5 percent).
• The types of errors most likely to cause patient harm are delivering the wrong medication, or delivering the right drug through the wrong administration method (such as inappropriately crushing tablets) or via the wrong route.
• Patients older than 65 comprised more than half the patients who died from medication errors and, overall, were twice as likely as younger patients to suffer harm from a medication error. On average, geriatric patients also require more complex drug regimens, which increase the possibility of a medication error.
• The drugs most commonly involved in harmful medication errors are morphine, insulin and heparin.