A new study, conducted in Irish hospitals and published in a British journal, reviewed the effectiveness of a “collaborative” model of managing hospital patients’ medications. The model, known as the Collaborative Pharmaceutical Care in Tallaght Hospital (PACT), involves close involvement of clinical pharmacists in all stages of patient care during…
Pharmacies often rely on a team of medical professionals to meet the demands of customers. These teams consist of pharmacists, who must meet educational and licensing requirements in all U.S. states and the District of Columbia; and pharmacy technicians, who are not always subject to such strict credentialing requirements. Some…
A hospital in Houston, Texas has adopted a “narrative-based approach” of communicating the details of medication errors to hospital staff (login required). A medication safety consultant employed by the hospital found that the prior approach, which relied on unit managers to pass along information to their teams, was not leading…
The parents of an infant allege that a California hospital is responsible for injuries that required their child to go on life support. Hospital staff reportedly administered far more than the prescribed dosage of medication while treating the child for meningitis. Doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and other medical professionals have a…
In order to recover damages for injuries caused by a pharmacy error, a plaintiff must prove that the defendant breached a duty of care that it owed to the injured person. A state appellate court ruled that the husband of a nursing home patient who died due to a medication…
Confusion between two similarly-named drugs can be harmful or even fatal if the error is not detected quickly. An error could result from any number of circumstances, such as a pharmacist who misreads a doctor’s handwriting or a nurse who accidentally administers the wrong drug. The U.S. Food and Drug…
Hospital pharmacies, as opposed to retail pharmacies, present unique challenges that can lead to mistakes being made. Those include a much larger amount of patients being served at any given time, more complicated health issues or treatments, different doctors providing coordinated care, and the different medical professionals’ habits in writing…
An 87 year old woman suffering an asthma attack was taken to a local hospital in Winnipeg by her granddaughter. The woman’s granddaughter, who brought her to the hospital, thought that the treatment would be routine. What followed, however, was far from it. The woman reportedly ended up on life…
A recent article published in the Pharmacy Times, describes the astounding results of a study regarding the use of computerized provider order entry (CPOE) systems in hospitals. The study determined that as of 2008, the use of such systems has helped to avoid more than 17 million medication errors per…