In Frau Reinke’s recent encounters with medical “help”, I have seen “mistakes” and “blunders” and out and out stupidity. I’m not surprised that medical malpractice insurance is expensive. More than once we have been impacted by handwriting errors, confused instructions, and “that’s not int he written orders”. Arghhh!
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Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2006 17:23:04 PDT
From: “Peter G. Neumann” <neumann@csl.sri.com>
Subject: More on medical errors
A major study lists confusion over names and wrong doses among the mistakes,
and urges more use of computers in prescribing drugs.
At least 1.5 million Americans are injured or killed every year by
medication errors at a direct cost of billions of dollars, according to a
report issued Thursday by the prestigious Institute of Medicine in
Washington, D.C.
For hospitalized patients, the report said that on average, one medication
error per day was caused by confusion in drug names, wrong doses, failure to
deliver drugs or a host of other problems.
The study is a follow-up to a 1999 report from the institute, which is part
of the National Academies, that outlined all medical errors and claimed that
as many as 98,000 people were killed each year as a result of medical errors
— 7,000 of them as a result of medication errors. The study lays out a
detailed series of recommendations for new procedures and research to
minimize the risk of future medication errors, emphasizing computerization
of prescribing and administering drugs and data acquisition.
[Source: Medication Errors Hazardous to Your Health, Thomas H. Maugh II,
*Los Angeles Times*, 21 Jul 2006; PGN-ed, tnx to Lauren Weinstein]
http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-sci-drugs21jul21,0,5771929.story?coll=la-home-health
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Posted by reinkefj 
Reinke Faces Life 