Safety surrounding parenteral nutrition systems

Parenteral nutrition (PN) is one of the most complex medications administered to hospitalized and ambulatory patients. Despite the successful clinical use of PN for over 3 decades, adverse events continue to occur, resulting in serious morbidity or even mortality. There are multiple points within the PN process for errors to occur: prescribing, transcription, preparation, and administration. Because of the lack of published literature about PN errors, a formal study was conducted to document the nature and severity of harm resulting from medication errors during the PN process.