What Were the Top Maryland Pharmacy Errors for 2020?

The following are among the top 10 medication errors and hazards identified by ISMP:

• Prescribing, dispensing, and administering extended-release opioid medications to those patients who are not already receiving such medication on a daily basis. This practice has led to serious harm and death in the past, and continues to occur.
• Failure to use smart infusion pumps equipped with dose error-reduction systems in surgical settings, potentially leading to anesthesia errors.
• Errors involving the medication, oxytocin, many of which were caused by look-alike vials and label confusion.
• Errors involving COVID-19 vaccines, including label and mix-up issues, mixing and dilution errors, and unsegregated refrigerator and freezer storage of the vaccines.
• Use of the outdated “syringe pull-back” method of verification during pharmacy sterile compounding, which may lead to errors of the wrong concentration, strength, or product when making injections.
• Combining or manipulating commercially available sterile products (such as IV infusions or injections) outside of the pharmacy, where errors can more easily occur.
• Wrong route errors with tranexamic acid, caused by vial mix-ups.
• Use of error-prone abbreviations, symbols, or dose designations, which can be misunderstood, misread, or misinterpreted and lead to patient harm.

These errors are clearly complicated, but can cause serious harm. But patients who have been hurt due to one of these errors or another may not be sure what happened to them, or how to hold someone accountable. In these situations, they may consider contacting a personal injury attorney to learn how they can file a Maryland Pharmacy Error lawsuit.