Which Merp error category is defined as an error that may have contributed or resulted in a patients death?
A medication error is any incorrect or wrongful administration of a medication, such as a mistake in dosage or route of administration, failure to prescribe or administer the correct drug or formulation for a particular disease or condition, use of outdated drugs, failure to observe the correct time for administration of the drug, or lack of awareness of adverse effects of certain drug combinations. Causes of medication error may include difficulty in reading handwritten orders, confusion about different drugs with similar names, and lack of information about a patient's drug allergies or sensitivities. Show The National Coordinating Council for Medication Error Reporting and Prevention (NCC MERP) has organized medication errors into four major groupings encompassing a total of nine categories (categories A through I):
Contents
Prescription error factsThe following are some sobering facts related to medication errors.
Causes of errorsAccording to a study of prescription errors conducted by MEDMARX and released in 2005, the following is a quick breakdown about the causes of these errors:
Error reportingThe National Medication Errors Reporting Program, operated by the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP MERP), is a confidential voluntary program that provides expert analysis of system-based causes of medication errors. Through various media outlets, the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) communicates recommendations for improving safety. ISMP MERP's voluntary reporting is available at https://www.ismp.org/orderforms/reporterrortoismp.asp It is also useful to report medication misadventures to the Food and Drug Administration's MedWatch program at http://www.fda.gov/Safety/MedWatch/default.htm, excluding vaccines. Adverse events involving vaccines should be reported to Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) at http://vaers.hhs.gov/esub/index which is ran by both the FDA and the CDC. Much like ISMP MERP, MedWatch is also voluntary, but VAERS is actually mandatory. Error preventionThere are a broad array of error prevention tools out there including using the five rights (some times also expanded to the seven rights), using extra precautions with respect to high-alert medications, adopting system wide use of Tallman lettering, avoiding error prone abbreviations, and using barcoding technology. See alsoFive rights References
Which one of the MERP error categories includes errors that contribute to the death of a patient?34.1 Category I An error occurred that may have contributed to or resulted in the patient's death.
How many Merp categories are there?... MERP has also proposed a medication error index intended to categorize errors based on severity or outcome of the medication error. The index is divided into four main categories and nine subcategories (Figure 1) [8] .
What are the three different categories of medical errors?Medication events (including adverse drug events/reactions) Healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) Surgical errors. Laboratory errors.
What is considered a near miss error?WHO defines a near miss as “an error that has the potential to cause an adverse event (patient harm) but fails to do so because of chance or because it is intercepted” (2).
|