Medication Error Prevention and Analysis
A medication error is any preventable event that may cause or lead to inappropriate medication use or patient harm while the medication is in control of the health care professional, patient or consumer. The most important word in the definition is "preventable." Medication errors do not have to occur. They are preventable.
Just because a medicine's benefits outweigh known risks, it does not mean that the drug is going to be administered properly. For example, the name of one medicine might be confused with the name of another medicine; as a result, a person will get the wrong medicine. This is a preventable error. If a person is supposed to get 10 milligrams of a medicine, but mistakenly receives 100 milligrams, this again is a preventable error.
