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Drug Errors Harm 1 in 15 Hospitalized Children
by
findingDulcinea Staff
A new scientific detection method indicates that 7.3 percent of hospitalized children—or about 540,000 kids a year—are hurt by drug-related events.
30-Second Summary
The first scientific test of the new method shows that the number of medicine errors, accidental overdoses and adverse drug reactions that hurt hospitalized children far exceeds earlier estimates based on traditional detection techniques.
More than half of the errors found in the study related to problems stemming from the use of powerful painkillers, such as morphine.
The new detection system uses a list of 15 “triggers” that suggest potential drug-related problems. For example, the appearance of vitamin K on a child patient’s chart is a trigger, because the vitamin cancels out the effects of the blood thinner Coumadin.
Most of the errors—97 percent—caused only minor, temporary harm, including nausea and rashes.
The issue of medical errors among hospitalized children was spotlighted last year when actor Dennis Quaid’s newborn twins were given a massive overdose of the blood thinner heparin while at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.
The twins recovered, and Quaid became a vocal advocate for improving patient safety, establishing a foundation to promote the cause.
According to the National Academy of Science’s Institute of Medicine, as many as 100,000 people a year die from medical mistakes.
More than half of the errors found in the study related to problems stemming from the use of powerful painkillers, such as morphine.
The new detection system uses a list of 15 “triggers” that suggest potential drug-related problems. For example, the appearance of vitamin K on a child patient’s chart is a trigger, because the vitamin cancels out the effects of the blood thinner Coumadin.
Most of the errors—97 percent—caused only minor, temporary harm, including nausea and rashes.
The issue of medical errors among hospitalized children was spotlighted last year when actor Dennis Quaid’s newborn twins were given a massive overdose of the blood thinner heparin while at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.
The twins recovered, and Quaid became a vocal advocate for improving patient safety, establishing a foundation to promote the cause.
According to the National Academy of Science’s Institute of Medicine, as many as 100,000 people a year die from medical mistakes.
Headline Links: Drug errors more frequent than previously thought
Traditional methods of detecting drug errors use nonspecific patient chart reviews and voluntary error reporting instead of the 15 triggers used in the new procedures. Allen Vaida of the Institute for Safe Medication Practices said that although the methods used in the new study are helpful, a more comprehensive approach is still necessary to detect the most serious and least common errors.
Source: MSNBC
"This gives us some valuable insight into the frequency of medication-related harm," said Dr. Paul Sharek, medical director of quality management at Stanford University's Lucile Packard Children's Hospital and lead author of the study. Researchers reviewed the charts of 960 randomly selected children from 12 children's hospitals around the United States for the new study.
Source: HealthDay
Related Topic: Dennis Quaid’s quest for patient safety
Quaid said in late March that he still had not ruled out suing Cedars-Sinai for the medical mix-up that endangered the lives of his newborn twins. "We haven't brought any kind of suit against Cedars . . . because we want them to do the right thing. We're still waiting, although time is running short for us," Quaid said at the annual meeting of the Assn. of Health Care Journalists.
Source: Los Angeles Times (registration may be required)
Quaid talked about the terrifying incident on “60 Minutes.” “It was the scariest, most frightening day that I think either of us have ever been through, to come face to face with your little kids who—so young in that kinda situation," he said. CBS has video of the interview.
Source: CBS News
Since his twins’ overdose, Quaid has launched The Quaid Foundation, which invites others to share stories of medical mistakes. He writes on the foundation Web site that part of the group’s mission is to “serve as watchdog advocate and facilitator in the development and implementation of systems, technology, and safeguards that maximize patient safely while minimizing the impact of HUMAN ERROR in patient medical treatment.”
Source: The Quaid Foundation
Simple human errors the result of a larger problem
As many as 100,000 people a year die because of medical mistakes resulting from simple human error. Allen Vaida, executive vice president of the nonprofit Institute for Safe Medication Practices, says those errors reflect the much larger problem of a “system breakdown” that includes overworked nurses, overcrowded hospitals and the absence of proper manual and technical checks and balances.
Source: NPR
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