Bottles of the prescription arthritis and pain medication VIOXX. A Texas jury on April 22, found that painkiller Vioxx caused the death of 71-year-old Leonel Garza in 2001 and awarded US$7 million in compensatory damages and US$25 million in punitive damages to his family. - Reuters

The incidence of medication errors is reported to be harming millions in the United States of America. A July 21 report in the Washington Post, quoted from a national study which found widespread errors in the giving and taking of medication. Edited excerpts are published below.

At least 1.5 million Americans are sickened, injured or killed each year by errors in prescribing, dispensing and taking medications, the Institute of Medicine concluded in a major report released July 20.

Mistakes in giving drugs are so prevalent in hospitals that, on average, a patient will be subjected to a medication error each day he or she occupies a hospital bed, the report by a panel of experts said.

Extensive study

Following up on its influential 2000 report on medical errors of all kinds, the institute, a branch of the National Academies, undertook the most extensive study ever of medication errors in response to a request made by Congress in 2003 when it passed the Medicare Modernisation Act.

The report found errors to be not only harmful and widespread, but very costly as well. The extra expense of treating drug-related injuries occurring in hospitals alone was estimated conservatively to be US$3.5 billion a year.

Many of these medication errors could be avoided if doctors adopted electronic prescribing, if hospitals had a standardised bar-code system for checking and dispensing drugs, and if patients made more of an effort to know about the risks of the drugs they take, the report said.

Immediate action necessary

The panel members said the problem requires immediate action and that many key players in health care have been slow to take the steps - and invest the money - needed to significantly reduce medication errors. At least a quarter of the injuries caused by drug errors are clearly preventable, the report said.

Common errors include doctors writing prescriptions that could interact dangerously with other drugs a patient is taking, nurses putting the wrong medication - or the wrong dose - in an intravenous drip, and pharmacists dispensing 100-milligram pills rather than the prescribed 50-milligram dose.

The report looks to new technologies, in addition to electronic prescribing, to dramatically reduce the number of medication errors. Hospitals, for instance, could greatly benefit by having a standardised bar-code system to ensure that a patient gets the correct medicine, it says.