There are currently as many as 1750 drugs on the market, even very different from each other, whose names are so similar or assonant as to give rise to confusion.
A ward in the emergency room where the doctor asks for aspirin and the nurse promptly rushes with heparin, or hydrocortone is asked and hydrocodone arrives. It's not some kind of parody of "the craziest emergency room in the world" but it is what happens in American hospitals. In the last year, collecting data in only ten percent of all US hospitals, about 26,000 cases of drug administration errors due to misunderstanding among health professionals have been documented. The cause? It is not incompetence but the excessive similarity between the names of some products. In the screams of the emergency room it is not always possible to understand the correct name of the drug. The news appeared in the latest issue of Newsweek magazine.
This singular analysis has revealed that there are currently 1750 drugs on the market, even very different from each other, whose names are so similar or assonant as to give rise to confusion. A good number of medical errors, therefore, which occur in emergency conditions, are due to communication problems.
On the other hand, real codes are sometimes established in the emergency departments whereby, faced with a patient with a particular clinical picture, if the doctor asks for the "neo", the nurse is absolutely able to understand whether he must prepare neosynephrine to increase blood pressure or the antibiotic neomycin or neostigmine to counteract muscle relaxation after surgery. But if there's a new person in the department or someone who doesn't know the code, the well-run mechanism jumps.
A solution proposed by some experts is to draw up a check-list, i.e. to write down the drugs that are supplied to the patient at the time of the emergency and, as soon as you have a breather, check the list and check if all the administrations have been done correctly. The point would be to verify if this route is really feasible considering that, in an emergency department, writing down the drugs administered to patients could add another layer to the already existing chaos. emanuela fat The Scientific Thought Publisher 07-02-08
Bibliography. Adler J. You say aspirin, I say heparin. Newsweek January 30, 2008.
