[Drug errors during anesthesia]
Takanao Hirai1, Shinjiro Shono, Kazuo Higa
1Department of Anesthesiology, Fukuoka University School of Medicine, Fukuoka 814-0180.
Summary
Anesthesia drug errors occurred in 0.12% of patients, with wrong drug administration being the most common issue. Fortunately, no severe complications resulted from these medication errors in the study period.
Area of Science:
- Anesthesiology
- Patient Safety
- Medication Error Analysis
Context:
- Analysis of incident reports from June 2000 to June 2003.
- Data collected at the Department of Anesthesiology, Fukuoka University Hospital.
- Focus on drug administration errors during anesthetic procedures.
Purpose:
- To identify and quantify drug errors during anesthesia.
- To determine the types and frequency of medication errors.
- To assess the patient outcomes associated with these errors.
Summary:
- Drug errors occurred in 18 (0.12%) of 15,271 patients.
- The most frequent error was wrong drug administration (12 events).
- Dosage errors (5 events) and wrong route errors (1 event) were also reported.
Impact:
- Highlights the incidence of drug errors in anesthesia.
- Provides data on common types of medication mistakes.
- Indicates a low rate of severe sequelae from identified errors.
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