COMMON MEDICATION ERRORS
Medical mistakes happen more often than you think. In fact, they are now the third leading cause of death in the US. More than 250,000 people die in the US each year due to medical mistakes. How many of those are due to medication errors? Mistakes involving medications are among the most common healthcare errors. The most common causes of medication errors have to do with slips and lapses by healthcare professionals followed by knowledge-based mistakes and deliberate violations.
Medication errors hurt about 5 million people each year. Often, nurses or doctors give a patient the wrong medication. Sometimes the wrong dosage is given. There are times when a patient does not receive their required medication. Studies show that many errors occur because of:
- Inadequate communication between healthcare professions.
- Problems with medicine supply and storage.
- Healthcare profession fatigue
- Distractions while administering the medication.
Doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals have a duty to ensure they are performing at a high standard when they are working with patients. If they fail to do so, they are likely to make mistakes that harm the people they are supposed to be helping. Many people depend on medications to survive, but there are so many things that can go wrong if a person’s medications are not administered properly or the dosage is incorrect.
When healthcare professionals make medication errors, which are common, they need to be held accountable. We are not saying that these people do not make mistakes, but we do believe that patients should be compensated when they happen. A medical malpractice lawsuit does not mean an intentional error was made by a healthcare professional, but it does mean that something went wrong with their standard of care and it needs to be rectified.
