Medication Errors Highest in Radiology

The Medical Connectivity Consulting blog describes a USP finding about medication errors in radiology.

Link: Medical Connectivity Consulting

Medication errors that harm patients are seven times more frequent in the course of radiological services than in other hospital settings, according to the analysis by the United States Pharmacopeia. (Press release)

From 2000 to 2004, 12 percent of the 2,032 medication errors reported in radiological services resulted in patient harm. This is more than seven times the percentage of harmful errors reported in the 2000–2004 general MEDMARX data set. Radiological services were also more likely to result in the need for additional care and consumption of resources.

Inpatient and outpatient radiological services include the radiology department, cardiac catheterization laboratory, and nuclear medicine. These services involve an increasing number of procedures and tests each year, despite the common misperception that radiology is limited to x-rays. In addition to diagnostic exams, radiological services include procedures such as draining abscesses, inserting gastric feeding tubes, inserting arterial stents, and performing angioplasties.

Patients in radiology may face higher risks because of the potentially dangerous drugs used in diagnostic tests and as a consequence of patients being transferred, with care being handed off from one department to another.

...of errors that occurred in radiology departments, 12 percent resulted in some kind of harm to patients, which is seven times higher than the percentage of hospital medication errors that caused harm overall.

Comments

[dentists]

It is sad to know that there are a lot of people that has a medication error just because of the radiation. We all know that radiation are not good to our health because it can cause a lot of diseases. Ad it is sad to know that most of the affected by this was the patient that undergo by some other radiology.

I hope that the doctor can handle this kind of situation and they can heal all the patient that effected by this radiation.