Each day, thousands of patients expect that the drugs administered to them are safe and designed to treat their conditions and alleviate their pain. Failure of that expectation may result in increased morbidity or worse.
As physician anesthesiologists, we are trained to understand and act upon individual clinical needs, provide care to patients in a variety of settings and work collaboratively with surgeons and other physicians, nurses, pharmacists and other clinical and non-clinical staff. As leaders within these facilities, we have a unique role to play in decreasing the risk of a patient experiencing adverse medication events.
The frequency of medication errors in the perioperative environment has been reported to be as often as one in 20 administrations.1 Observed error rates are higher than self-reported rates, and types of errors often include incorrect dosing, drug substitution, contraindicated drug administration and timing errors. Incorrect dosing was the most common type...
