FDA initiative targets drug prescription, dosing errors

The Food and Drug Administration wants to reduce the misuse of medications, saying that at least 50,000 hospitalizations a year could be prevented if physicians, pharmacists, patients and parents used greater care in dispensing and taking drugs.

"When I first started looking at this, I was stunned at the scope of the problem," FDA commissioner Margaret A. Hamburg said Wednesday as she announced the new "Safe Use" program.

The Institute of Medicine estimates that at least 1.5 million preventable injuries and deaths result each year from overdosing, mix-ups and unintended exposure to prescription drugs. Children are often the victims -- one study found that, between 2003 and 2006, more than 9,000 children were accidentally exposed to prescription drugs such as codeine and morphine.

The cost of these preventable injuries is estimated at about $4 billion annually by the Institute of Medicine.

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Medication Errors Could Be Cut: Experts - Two reports show promise of computers, pharmacists for proper prescribing

Medication errors and adverse drug reactions cost lives and dollars each year in the United States, but two new reports suggest ways hospitals and pharmacists can work to reduce these mistakes.

Medication errors are one of the most common medical errors, affecting at least 1.5 million people every year and costing the health-care system between $77 billion and $177 billion annually, researchers point out in the April 27 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

In the first report, researchers led by Dr. Jeffrey L. Schnipper, of Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, used a computer system to keep track of the medications patients were taking when they were admitted to the hospital and the medications they were taking when they were discharged.

"It turns out that we commit about 1.5 errors per patient either for the admissions orders in the hospital or, much more commonly, in the discharge orders, which is kind of appalling," Schnipper said. "These are errors with potential for patient harm. There are about three times as many errors without potential for patient harm."

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Depression in Young Doctors Tied to Medication Errors

Medical residents who are depressed are about six times more likely to make medication errors than those who aren't depressed, says a study that looked a 123 pediatric residents at three children's hospitals in the United States.

Researchers found that 20 percent of the residents were depressed, and 74 percent were burned out. During the study period, the residents made a total of 45 medications errors, and those who were depressed made 6.2 times more medication errors than those who weren't depressed.

There didn't appear to be any link between higher medication error rates and burnout. The study was published online Feb. 7 in the British Medical Journal.

These findings suggest that doctors' mental health may play a more significant role in patient safety than previously suspected, the study authors said. In addition, the high burnout rate among residents in this study -- consistent with other studies -- indicates that methods of training doctors may cause stress that harms residents' health.

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